Chung-Pei Ma

Research Interests

Ma is a theoretical and observational astrophysicist and cosmologist. Her research group uses luminous matter to study dark components in the universe: dark matter, dark energy, and black holes.  Among the topics she has studied include the properties of dark matter and dark energy, the cosmic microwave background, gravitational lensing, galaxy formation and evolution, supermassive black holes, and the large-scale structure of the universe.

Biography

Chung-Pei Ma is the Judy Chandler Webb Professor in Physical Sciences and Professor of Astronomy and of Physics at UC Berkeley.  She received both her undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before joining the Berkeley faculty in 2002, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology and an Assistant and Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, where she won the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. Ma was the cosmology scientific editor for The Astrophysical Journal in 2007-2017.

Ma is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts of Sciences. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Astronomical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Ma is an avid violin player and was an exchange student at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston while studying cosmic strings and theoretical cosmology at MIT.  She was the first prize winner in the Taiwan National Violin Competition in 1983.