WELCOME!

I am currently a postdoc researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and I will join the University of Rochester as an Assistant Professor in 2025. I am interested in exoplanets and brown dwarfs, as well as their formation and atmospheres. I conduct surveys to search for giant planets and brown dwarfs that are either wide-orbit companions to stars or members of nearby associations. I construct a large, well-defined sample of these benchmarks and then use them to explore the formation of the outer architecture of extrasolar planetary systems and to test our understanding of ultracool atmospheres.

NEWS

2023-06-07: Science Advances publishes our work about the escaping helium from the hot Jupiter HAT-P-32 b[link]

2023-02-24: AAS Nova highlights our study of the Kepler-444 planetary system[link]

2022-04-04: I am extremely honored and lucky to be awarded the 2022 Sagan Fellowship [link]

2021-12-16: I received the 2022 AAS Doxsey Travel Prize.

2021-07-28: Press release of our extrasolar planet discovery COCONUTS-2b, the closest imaged exoplanet to Earth! [UH News] [Forbes] [The Independent] [MSN]

2021-06-22: I am Dr. ZJ Zhang!

2021-04-21: I gave an oral presentation at the STScI Spring Symposium --- Towards the Comprehensive Characterization of Exoplanets: Science at the Interface of Multiple Measurement Techniques [Video]

2020-11-09: I gave a poster presentation at the Exoplanet Demographics virtual conference [PDF]

2020-11-01: My collaboration has released the UltracoolSheet to the community, a catalog of photometry, astrometry, spectroscopy, and multiplicity for 3000+ ultracool dwarfs and imaged exoplanets [Google Sheets] [Zenodo]

2020-07-27: I am giving a poster presentation at the Exoplanets III virtual conference [PDF] [video]

2020-04-06: I received the OVCR Student Excellence in Research Award [media]