Fangzheng Liu | 刘芳政 (fzliu@mit.edu)

About me

Hi! I'm a PhD student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. I'm studying in Responsive Environments group, advised by Prof. Joe Paradiso

I'm a maker, engineer, and I hope I could go to the space in the future! I love painting, basketball, and hiking! I really enjoy building things (embedded systems, electroncal-mechanical systems) that can do some interesting things.

Background & experience

I got my first Master degree in Signal and Information Processing from China (2018). After that, I went to CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), and worked as an engineer in the AMS-02 (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) experiment, a state-of-the-art particle physics detector operating on the International Space Station (ISS). The experiment is led by Nobel laureate of physics Prof. Samuel C. C. Ting.

Me at AMS-02 & The AMS-02 on the ISS.

In AMS-02, I was helping with the tests of an Upgraded Tracker Thermal Pump System (UTTPS) that was installed on the AMS-02 through four space walks (Extravehicular Activities or EVAs) by the end of January, 2020. I developed monitoring and control software by using LabVIEW for the thermal vacuum tests of the UTTPS. We used the LabVIEW software to control all the test equipment and monitor the test environment.

The AMS-02 UTTPS thermal vacuum test in Terny, Italy.
Astronauts are installing the UTTPS.

After a year of work at CERN, I came to MIT Media Lab. I got my second Master's degree from MIT Media Lab in Digital communication and Multimedia in 2021, and now I'm pursuing my PhD.