• Home
  • About
    • Tiger C. Lu photo

      Tiger C. Lu

      Flatiron Research Fellow at the Center for Computational Astrophysics

    • Learn More
    • Email
    • Github
  • Research
  • Outreach
  • Mentoring
  • CV

About Me

Welcome!

My name is Tiger and I study planetary motion.

Me!

Over the past three decades, the search for planets around other stars has unveiled an astonishing diversity of bizarre worlds that have seriously challenged our best theories of planet formation. My research concerns the formation of these strange systems, and I approach this problem with a combination of analytic theory and numerical simulations.

I’m interested in a lot of things. If it involves dynamics, I can probably be convinced to like it! Here are a few things I’m thinking about at the moment, and do feel free to reach out if any of these excite you!

  • Self-consistent treatment of dynamics with planetary structure evolution
  • Breaking the chains
  • Dynamical outcomes of planet-planet scattering
  • The interior structures of exoplanets, and how we can measure them
  • Numerical methods that can speed up N-Body simulations
  • 3D Architectures

I’m presently

  • a Flatiron Research Fellow at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics
  • an affiliated postdoc in the Rice Research Group

Prior to my current position, I recently received my Ph.D. from Yale University in 2025 where I was advised by Gregory Laughlin and Malena Rice. My dissertation was titled Planets are not Points: the Profound Effect of Planetary Structure on Exoplanet System Architectures. I am told the Acknowledgements are quite wholesome, if you’re interested in reading about the many wonderful people who’ve been important to my career. You can also find a video of my defense here. Prior to that I received my B.S. in Astrophysics from Caltech in 2020.

I grew up in Shanghai, China and even after all this time I believe it to be the greatest city in the world. When I’m not thinking about planets I enjoy, in no particular order: boba, running, stuffed animals, the ocean, the outfits worn by Uniqlo mannequins, national parks and kombucha. on. tap.

Pictured here are a few research-related highlights over the years that make me happy!

With my amazing advisor Malena Rice, just minutes after I successfully defended my dissertation this summer.
Winning the Duncombe Student Research Prize at DDA, which has always been my favorite conference. Presented by Smadar Naoz.
Group of mentees
With my longtime academic idol Sarah Millholland, after a talk at the MIT EAPS department.
At the Extreme Solar Systems conference in New Zealand with Rosemary Mardling and Doug Lin, two titans of the field.
With my longtime mentor and collaborator Gongjie Li, after a talk at Georgia Tech.
With my brilliant student Nina Liu, after her first-ever conference talk at DDA!
On a road trip with my brilliant student Haedam Im.
Baby's first conference! With my dear friend Konstantin Gerbig en route to Exoplanets IV. Look how far we've come!
A meal in collaboration with Yubo Su at Exoplanets V in Leiden. I'm in the picture, by the way -- that's my hand!
kombucha. on. tap.
On my official Flatiron Institute visit, immediately before accepting my current position. Pictured here with Jiayin Dong, to whom I owe a deep debt of gratitude for answers all my incessant CCA questions.
It turns out there's something of a Yale Prospective Visit of 2020 -> CCA pipeline. Pictured here with Tom Wagg and Hector Afonso Cruz, who I'm very excited to call my co-workers for the next three years!
My first visitor on the new job! With the incredible rising star Josephine Baggen.