Marc HON
PhD, UNSW Sydney, Australia (2020)
Assistant Professor, NUS Presidential Young Professorship

Email: mtyhon@mit.edu

Current Research

  • My research focuses on time-domain astronomy and machine learning. I am interested in applying data-driven approaches towards observations from missions like NASA’s Kepler, TESS, and the upcoming Roman Space Telescope to characterize populations of stars and discover novel astrophysical phenomena.
  • A primary science focus of my research is asteroseismology—the study of stellar oscillations—which I use to understand the internal structure of stars and map the history of the Milky Way. This connects directly to Galactic archaeology, where variable stars serve as tools for tracing the evolution of our Galaxy. I am also interested in exoplanetary science, particularly the evolution of planetary systems, the search for habitable worlds, and their atmospheric characterization with the James Webb Space Telescope.

Selected Publications

  • Hon, M.; Li, Y.; Ong, J.. “Flow-Based Generative Emulation of Grids of Stellar Evolutionary Models”, 2024, The Astrophysical Journal, 973, 154.
  • Hon, M.; Huber, D.; Rui, N. Z.; et al.. “A close-in giant planet escaping engulfment by its star”, 2023, Nature, 618, 917.
  • Hon, M.; Huber, D.; Kuszlewicz, J. S.; et al.. “A ’Quick Look’ at All-Sky Galactic Archeology with TESS: 158,000 Oscillating Red Giants from the MIT Quick-Look Pipeline”, 2021, The Astrophysical Journal, 919, 131.
  • Hon, M; Stello, D.; Zinn, J.. “Detecting Solar-like Oscillations in Red Giants with Deep Learning”, 2018, The Astrophysical Journal, 859, 64.
  • Hon, M.; Stello, D.; Yu, J.. “Deep learning classification in asteroseismology using an improved neural network: results on 15,000 Kepler red giants and applications to K2 and TESS data”, 2018, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 476, 3233.

Affiliations & Links