Portrait of George Wong I am a theoretical and computational astrophysicist. I study how black holes accrete and release energy, and what their light reveals about the surrounding plasma and spacetime. My work combines analytic models, relativistic fluid simulations, and radiation transport to connect physical mechanisms to observable signals.

I am an Associate Research Scholar in Princeton University's Leinweber Forum for Theoretical Physics and a Visitor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study. I also serve as a co-coordinator of the Theory Working Group in the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration.

Accretion dynamics and radiation

How do matter and magnetic fields regulate accretion and jet power? I investigate mass and magnetic flux transport and magnetic support in black hole accretion flows, and how those dynamics appear in images, polarization, and variability. I am particularly interested in what observations can teach us about the physical mechanisms driving accretion and powering relativistic jets.

Lensing and spacetime inference

What can the paths of light around a black hole tell us about spacetime? I introduced black hole glimmer: a sequence of delayed images of the same emission event. With collaborators, I have investigated how interferometric measurements can recover these echoes when variability in the source obscures them. My ongoing work explores the geometry of lensed images and the information they encode.

Selected research

I have taught undergraduate physics and computer science and co-mentored student research in accretion physics, plasma variability, and ray tracing. I enjoy helping students connect a calculation to a physical question and develop the judgment to interpret its results.