Nuclear experiments tightly constrain the properties of matter around or below nuclear saturation density, however, at high densities there are considerable uncertainties because cold, dense matter cannot be created in the laboratory. Neutron star interior is the only site to harbor extreme matter under extreme gravity, and in this talk I will report on some recent advances, longstanding puzzles, and future prospects in extracting
information on dense matter from various observations of neutron stars.

Sophia obtained her Ph.D. in physics at Washington University in St. Louis in 2015, where she was supervised by Prof. Mark Alford. After graduation, she then joined Prof. Andrew Steiner’s group, working as a postdoc at University of Tennessee Knoxville and a guest visitor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Starting from Fall 2018, Sophia has been stationed at Ohio University within the N3AS (The Network in Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries) Collaboration led by UC Berkeley.

Sophia’s research interests revolve around properties of dense matter in the QCD phase diagram and neutron star physics. She has been working on effects of possible phase transitions in neutron star Equation of State and relating them to astrophysical observations. She is also interested in constraining theoretical models of nuclear matter and connections to laboratory measurements of neutron-rich nuclei.