I study the structure, stellar content and dynamics of nearby galaxies to understand how galaxies form and evolve. I am an observational astronomer, and I use data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the Gemini telescopes, the MMT, and other observatories to study systems of globular clusters around early-type galaxies. Globular clusters are old star clusters that are some of the oldest stellar populations in the Universe, and their properties tell us about conditions during the early epochs of galaxy formation. I am a member of the ACS Virgo and Fornax Cluster Surveys, the HST/ACS Coma Cluster Treasury Survey and the Next Generation Virgo Survey, all of which are surveys of galaxies in nearby galaxy clusters.
The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS). I am a core member of the NGVS, a Large Program on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) to produce deep, multicolor images of the entire 104 deg2 of the nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies.
Telescope Access Program (TAP), co-chair. I am one of the lead organizers of TAP, a program sponsored by the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, to provide Chinese astronomers access to international, competitive, optical-infrared telescope facilities. This program, started in 2011, has distributed hundreds of nights of observing time to astronomers in the Chinese community through a competitive proposal process.
