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JI WANG
Astronomer and Instrumentalist
I am an associate professor at the Ohio State University
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News

03.05.2025 My paper on the accretion history of giant planets has been published on The Astrophysical Journal. Read the OSU news here. 

03.04.2025 Undergraduate student Greg Costa present his poster at the Denman Undergraduate Research Forum on monitoring the evolution of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere. 

02.27.2025 Congratulations to Haniyeh Tajer for being selected to be a LSST Discovery Alliance Data Science Fellow. 


02.24.2025 I am honored to be one of the four OSU faculty members to receive the Excellence in Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award. 

02.11.2025 I attended faculty recognition program sponsored by OSU library, picked a book to add to the library collection "Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演义)", had a brief and pleasant chat with University President and Provost. 

01.30.2025 Congratulations to Caprice Phillips on getting the NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship. This is two years in a row that my students are awarded this prestigious fellowship. 

06.29.2024 Attended the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) 2024 meeting in Pyeongchang . Check photos from the extensive Asian trip here. 

06.17.2024 At SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation in Yokohama to present the LBT nulling and high-resolution spectroscopy project. So great to catch up with so many colleagues in the instrumentation world. 

06.14.2024 Met with a group of scientists from Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and had a great conversation of spectral retrieval. 

06.10.2024 Visited National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and gave a talk on the early formation and massive accretion of directly-imaged exoplanets. 

06.05.2024 Attended a conference on Mercury and gave a talk on exo-Mercuries. The punchline is one hundred exo-mercuries are worth one Mercury. 

05.27.2024 Attended a workshop on habitability at Munich Institute for AstroParticle and BioPhysics (MIAPbP) and gave a talk on super-Mercuries. 

05.24.2024 Visited Max Planck Institute for Astronomy at Heidelberg and gave a talk on ultra-hot Jupiters. 

05.16.2024 Tenured!

​05.04.2024 We hosted an exoplanet exhibition booth at the COSI Science Festival. The event was attended by more than 10,000 people and participated by 150 exhibitors including a strong presence of OSU. 

05.02.2024 Congratulations to Dr. Kiersten Boley to successfully defend her thesis "From Soot Sprites to Planets: Impacts of Elemental Abundances on Planet Populations". She will be a Hubble Fellow at Carnegie EPL in Fall 2024

04.29.2024 Congratulations to Dr. Joe Schulze to successfully defend his thesis "The Rock-Star Relationship from Single Planets to Populations". He will be a postdoctoral fellow at Louisiana State University starting in Fall 2024.  

04.22.2024 We hosted an Exoplanet exhibition booth at the COSI’s Passport to the Color of Science 2024 . The event was attended by 750 female high school students in the Columbus metropolitan area including students from Ohio State School for the Blind and Ohio School of the Deaf. 

04.17.2024 Congratulations to Caprice Phillips on winning the American Fellowship for her dissertation study of habitable worlds and brown dwarf atmospheres supported by AAUW. 

04.08.2024 How amazing it is to have an sunny day to witness the total solar eclipse at OSU Marion campus. 

04.05.2024 Congratulations to Dr. Michael Plummer, my first PhD student, to successfully defend his thesis "Tempests in the Extrasolar Skies: Detecting Storms, Spots, and Waves on Super Jupiters and Brown Dwarfs". He will be back to United States Air Force Academy and we wish him the best in his future endeavor. 

03.27.2024 I visited IfA at University of Hawaii and gave my first two analog colloquium talks at Manoa and Hilo. 

03.19.2024 Joe Schulze's new paper has been published to confirm two distinctive populations of low-mass planets around low-mass stars: water worlds and dry rocky worlds. The new code RhoPop will soon be available. 

03.14.2024 Solar eclipse is coming in less than a month, so I talked about the upcoming solar eclipse to K1 kids at Wickliffe Elementary School. 

03.07.2024 I gave a public talk on twinkling stars and space telescopes at Columbus Science Pub. 

02.29.2024 I gave an experimental "analog talk" (i.e., a talk w/o slides) at the OSU astronomy club. 

02.15.2024 I talked at NPR with host Anna Staver on exoplanets and biosignatures. 

02.11.2024 Congratulations to Huihao Zahng on being offered graduate scholarship by two elite astronomy programs at University of Hawaii and Penn State. 

01.30.2024 Congratulations to Kiersten Boley on being awarded the prestigious NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship. 

01.29.2024 Huihao Zhang's new paper on detecting biosignature made a splash in news. 

01.18.2024 Congratulations to Caprice on passing candidacy. She will spend 2024SP at Flatiron Institute in NYC as a CCA predoctoral fellow. 

10.17.2023 Congratulations to Sydney Petz and Marshall Johnson on yet another PETS paper on the atmospheric chemistry of KELT-20 b. 

10.02.2023 Two of my single-author papers appeared on arxiv. One on HIP 65426 b and the other one on accretion history of gas giant planets. These two papers will pave way for the new round (Cycle-3) of JWST observing time application. 

09.19.2023 Anusha Pai led the GSpec redesign and passed the preliminary design review. Experimental results will come at the turn of 2023 and 2024. Many thanks to Dan Echeverri, Gene Serabyn, and Jonathan Crass for being the reviewers. 

09.09.2023 Stella and I are embarking on a new adventure Buckeye for a Cause to support local and global charitable organizations and her college fund. 

09.01.2023 Congratulations to Kiersten Boley on her new paper on lava worlds and Caprice Phillips on her new paper on detecting biosignatures with Twinkle. 

08.23.2023 New semester began and I was excited to teach a new course ASTRON 1221: Astronomy Data Analysis. All teaching materials are available on GitHub. 

08.08.2023 I attended the 51 Peg Summit and caught up with many colleagues including two of my most admired scientists: Lynne Hillenbrand and Debra Fischer.  

06.29.2023 I had a fantastic time at AO4ELT7 conference and gave a talk on multi-aperture fiber nulling. 

06.15.2023 I gave a colloquium talk at University of Liege on the composition of rocky planets and magma oceans. 

06.02.2023 I gave a colloquium talk at KU Leuven on the dual-aperture fiber nuller. The video is available on their YouTube channel. 

05.09.2023 Caprice has received an offer to be in the 2023-2024 CCA predoctoral program. She will go to CCA to work with Megan Bedell on the chemical abundances of stars hosting brown dwarfs. 

05.06.2023 We have had such a great time at the COSI Science Festival where we had a booth on exoplanets to show off our meteorite collection, solar system model, and the solar telescope. 

04.17.2023 Michael Plummer's new paper on detecting storms on ultra-cool worlds has been accepted by the Astrophysics Journal. Congratulations. 

04.10.2023 Congratulations to Caprice on being awarded the P.E.O Scholarship. Only two other women astronomers were awarded before and both went on their tenure track positions. 

04.03.2023 Congratulations to Caprice on winning the graduate student Award for Diversity Enhancement for her work in BlackInAstro and the department diversity journal club. 

03.16.2023 I have been awarded a travel grant by the Research Foundation - Flander (FWO) to visit KU Leuven in Belgium for 6 weeks in the summer of 2023. 

03.10.2023 Congratulations to Sydney Petz on winning the 3rd place at Denman Undergraduate Research Forum on her research on KELT-20 b. 

03.09.2023 I successfully finished three colloquia at Johns Hopkins University, University of Taxes at Austin, and University of Florida. One more to go at Penn State to conclude the tour this semester!

01.18.2023 Huihao was selected as an Eclipse Ambassador off the Path. The program will prepare 500 communities off the central paths of the back-to-back solar eclipses in 2023 and 2024. 

01.13.2023 Caprice and the Black in Astro Team won the Annie Maunder Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society. 

12.14.2022 Congratulations to Huihao Zhang on winning Ann Slusher Tuttle Award from the ​Department of Astronomy. 

12.06.2022 I gave a colloquium at MIT on all kinds of rocky planets, super-Earths, exo-Mercuries, lava worlds, you name it. 

11.18.2022 GLEAM (Great Lakes Exoplanet Area Meeting) 2022 concluded successfully. We had 80 participants coming to OSU to showcase highlights in exoplanet research. Hats off to David Martin and Marshall Johnson for organizing the meeting. 

11.09.2022 Caprice Phillips and Kiersten Boley won the AAS Beth Brown Memorial Prize for the best astronomy oral presentation and best astronomy poster presentation at the annual National Society of Black Physicists meeting. These awards include free travel to an upcoming AAS meeting and free AAS membership.

11.02.2022 I gave a remote talk on instrumentation programs at the large binocular telescope at the ET Science Seminar Series. It was great to see many of my Chinese colleagues on line. 

10.26.2022 Our paper on planet formation in HR 8799 has been accepted. We show an emerging trend that directly-imaged jovian planets formed in less than 1 Myr and accreted A LOT of metals post formation. 

10.13.2022 I visited Yale University to give a colloquium talk on winds blowing on hot Jupiters. It was nice to be back to New Haven 10 years after I became a postdoc there. East rock had not changed much, the run to the top was fun as always. 

10.06.2022 I gave a colloquium at University of Arizona. I really enjoyed the conversation on planet formation with Kaitlin Kratter, Andrew Youdin, and Daniel Apai. 

09.28.2022 Dual congratulations to Caprice on submitting her paper on LTT 1445 Ab, a habitable planet around a nearby star, and winning the Ann S. Tuttle Citizenship Award for her service within and beyond the department. 

09.27.2022 I visited University of Notre Dame to give a colloquium talk. I really enjoyed my conversations with Lauren Weiss, Justin Crepp, Jonathan Crass, Even Kirby, and Dinshaw Balsara on topics ranging from iLocator at LBT to anisotropic stellar winds. 

09.09.2022 I inaugurated Astro Tea. A weekly event for students, postdocs, and faculty members to discuss interdisciplinary topics. Many thanks for the department and CCAPP for the financial support. 

09.01.2022 Big congratulations to Marshall Johnson whose NASA XRP proposal has been selected for funding. We look forward to the next three years studying ultra-hot Jupiters' atmospheres with LBT. 

08.18.2022 I attended 51 Peg Science Summit and had a blast listening to talks and chatting with fellows and colleagues that I had not met in person for a long time. 

08.03.2022 Our ultra-hot Jupiter team (Anusha, Marshall, and me) visited University of Michigan. Look out for papers by Buckeyes and Wolverines (!!!) applying general circulation models (GCMs) to hot-Jupiter high-resolution data. 

07.26.2022 My visit to France has successfully concluded. The trip includes the CoolStars conference in Toulouse, a visit the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, and Observatoire de Paris.

07.11.2022 Congratulations to Kiersten Boley to be selected  to be an LSSTC Data Science Fellow in 2022. She joins an excellent cohort including Caprice Phillips who has been the Fellow since 2018. 

07.07.2022 Congratulations to Marshall Johnson on his first paper since joining the PEPSI Transiting Exoplanet Survey (PETS) collaboration. The PEPSI sensitivity and Marshall's efficiency (only 6 months to complete this excellent paper) is unbeatable! 

06.06.2022 Congratulations to Michael Plummer on his new paper on Doppler imaging of ultra-cool objects. The method we develop can be used to study cloud map on exoplanets and spotty stars hosting habitable rocky planets with next-generation telescopes. 

04.22. 2022 Congratulations to Avidaan Srivastavas for successfully defending his undergraduate thesis on differentiating partially- and fully-convective stars. 

04.18.2022 OSU Astronomy is now eligible to host 51 Peg b postdoctoral fellowship sponsored by the Heising-Simons Foundation starting from 2022. 

04.08.2022 Congratulations to Anusha on winning a graduate scholarship from NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities (NSTGRO). 

03.11.2022 Congratulations to Jared Kolecki on getting into the the graduate program at University of Notre Dame. 

03.07.2022 Congratulations to Caprice on passing her candidacy exam. The theme of her exam is searching for biosignatures in gas dwarf planets. 

03.04.2022 Congratulations to Alexander Stephan on submitting the paper on nodal precession of KELT-9 b and WASP-33 b. 

02.08.2022 Our paper on retrieving chemical abundances using spectra of Brown Dwarfs has been resubmitted. This marks the first time we can retrieve robust C and O abundances using high- and low-resolution data, a giant leap towards the era of the extremely large telescopes (ELTs). 

02.07.2022 I gave a public talk on SN 1054 and the Crab Nebulae to celebrate the Chinese new year. 

02.04.2022 I am so excited and grateful to receive the NSF CAREER Award to support my research in the search of biosignatures in the atmospheres of exoplanets. 

01.11.2022 Congratulations to Caprice on getting the AAS FAMOUS Travel Grant and the Sigma Xi research award. 

01.10.2022 Some good news to kick off 2022. Kiersten and Romy are selected as NASA ExoExplorers. This is second time that two members from our OSU exoplanet group are selected in the same year. Last year's cohort included Caprice and Samson. Congratulations!

12.06.2021 Congratulations to Jared on getting his new paper out on elemental abundances of JWST targets. 

11.09.2021 Congratulations to Kiersten on winning the 2021 Beth Brown Memorial Award at the annual meeting of the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP). Her talk title is "Constraining Hot Jupiter Occurrence around Metal-Pool Stars". 

11.01.2021 Congratulations to Kiersten on getting the 2021 IPAC Visiting Graduate  Fellowship. She will be working with Jessie Christiansen on planet formation around low-metallicity TESS stars. 

10.29.2021 Congratulations on Anusha's new paper on KELT-9 as an eclipsing double-lined spectroscopic binary. 

10.12.2021 Welcome Marshall Johnson to our group as a postdoctoral scholar. He is joining us from the Las Cumbres Observatory. 

09.28.2021 Caprice's paper on detecting exotic biosignatures of gas dwarf planets with JWST has been accepted. Congratulations!

09.24.2021 See my talk at the ELT conference on new techniques and technologies.  

09.10.2021 Caprice's talk at AbGradCon is up on youtube. Congratulations!

09.02.2021 Welcome to my Stars and Galaxies class in the fall of 2021. We have just finished our first group project on candidates for dark matters. 

08.24.2021 Welcome Michael Plummer to our group. He is an instructor at the Air Force Academy, and will be working on simulating performance of future telescopes. 

06.27.2021 Jared and Kiersten's papers on searching for transiting planets around halo stars I and II have been accepted by the AAS Journals. Congratulations to both on the magnificent work two years in the making!

06.21.2021 Congratulations to Joe on his new paper on the Planetary Science Journal "On the Probability That a Rocky Planet's Composition Reflects Its Host Star". 

05.28.2021 Our proposal "Peering Into Alien Worlds: A Synergistic Astronomical, Geochemical, And Laser Engineering Approach To Explore The Habitability Of Terrestrial Planets" has received the OSU President's Research Excellence Accelerator Award. 

04.22.2021 I finished teaching an interdisciplinary course Planetary Science in Spring 2021. I have so much to learn from my co-instructor and co-course developer Prof. Wendy Panero; and I am so grateful to have 19 wonderful students from Astronomy, Earth Science, and Chemistry. 

04.20.2021 Congratulations to Caprice for wining the 3rd place and Anusha for getting the Honorable Mention at the 35th Hayes Research Forum. 

04.20.2021 We have the first light in the single-mode fiber nuller experiment in the lab thanks to the untiring effort of Colby Jurgenson. More to come!

04.01.2021 Our group has received a generous gift from Two Sigma to advance the research in exoplanets.

04.01.2021 Five OSU scientists including me gave a group presentation on "What is a resilient Earth?". 

03.25.2021 Congratulations to Kiersten for winning the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.  

03.01.2021 Congratulations to Caprice, Kiersten, and Romy for making the Two Sigma Diversity PhD Fellowship finalist. 

02.25.2021 Our paper on the rotation of WASP-33 b is now published on the Astronomical Journal. 

11.24.2020 The JWST proposal marks the end of the proposal season in 2020. I remain hopeful that something positive will come from 2020. 


11.13.2020 Some uplifting news in this uncertain and stressful time: Caprice won the 3rd prize in the BlackInPhysics 3MT competition; Joe's paper is accepted in PSJ; and my NSF proposals have been submitted. 

10.20.2020 Our paper on the dual-aperture fiber nuller has been published on the Astronomical Journal. 

09.02.2020 Our paper on chemical abundance of HR 8799 and planet c has been published on the Astronomical Journal. 
​
08.25.2020 New semester begins, I am starting to teach Life in Universe. Check out here for my lovely students and their awesome designs of aliens. 



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