Ethan Baker

I am a graduate student in the Boston University Physics Department advised by Prof. Hongwan Liu. My main research interests lie in anything at the intersection of cosmology and high energy physics. I am especially interested in using under-utilized cosmological and astrophysical datasets to probe the particle nature of dark matter or a larger dark sector.

Much of my recent work has focused on applying this approach to data from radio telescopes. Over the last few years, giant radio telescopes (either single dishes or arrays of antennas) have come online and have already delivered significant results. These experiments can often probe higher redshifts (earlier times) than many other experiments, and are helping us better understand how the universe has evolved over the last several billion years.

Radio telescopes are also useful for trying to probe physics beyond the Standard Models of particle physics and cosmology. They produce vast quantities of data and are able to image the sky with excellent angular resolution. Also, some radio telescopes (e.g. CHIME, FAST) are able to detect very short-lived radio signals. These properties, which are somewhat unique to radio telescopes, mean they are often well-suited to looking for both astrophysical signals that are known to exist and for signs of new physics.

I have also studied how agentic AI tools can be used to accelerate the scientific process. Currently, many physicists (and scientists in many other fields) spend a great deal of time implementing complex physics ideas into computer code. This implementation process is usually one of the slowest parts of research. However, new tools like Claude Code and Codex mean that AI can produce well-written code as well. This has the potential to dramatically accelerate the pace of research, but also raises questions about how to validate the AI-written code and ensure that the physics is correct.

See my publications page for more info about all of this work!