Hello! I’m Zhoujian (ZJ) Zhang (张周健), an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester. Before joining U of R, I was a NASA Sagan Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. I earned my Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Hawai‘i in 2021 and my B.S. in Astronomy from Nanjing University in 2015.
My research focuses on characterizing the atmospheres of exoplanets, brown dwarfs, and low-mass stars, aiming to assess how accurately we can probe their atmospheric properties and how these properties reveal clues about their formation and evolution. I also use wide-field digital sky surveys to discover new exoplanets and brown dwarfs, particularly those in wide orbits around stars or moving through space as members of stellar groups.
I lead several observational programs using both ground-based telescopes, including Keck, Gemini (247 hours as PI), the Hobby Eberly Telescope (73 hours as PI), UKIRT (117 hours as PI), CFHT (53 hours as PI), and IRTF (49 nights as PI), and space-based facilities, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST; 83 hours as PI).
My CV is accessible here.
