talks & outreach
Invited talks, press coverage, and public engagement.
Recorded talks
Dynamical Effects of Shadows in Transition Disks: talk at the KITP conference Planets on Edge (2025) on shadow-induced spirals in transition disks (Zhang & Zhu 2024).
Talk at the Harvard ITC Luncheon (September 2023) on how thermal structure shapes the vertical shear instability (Zhang, Zhu & Jiang 2024).
Probing Young Planet Population with 3D Self-Consistent Thermodynamics: University of Arizona Origins Seminar (2023), covering DSHARP planet inference, machine learning (PGNets), and the vertical shear instability.
Invited talks
- DAMTP Astrophysics Seminar, University of Cambridge — Cambridge, UK, Nov 2026
- University of Minnesota Duluth Physics and Astronomy Colloquium — Duluth, MN, Sep 2026
- Exploring Planetary Systems in the Era of Time-Domain Astronomy — Honolulu, HI, Jun 2026
- Machine Learning for Disks — Milan, Italy, Apr 2026
- Hydrodynamic and Dusty Turbulence in Protoplanetary Disks — New York, NY, Feb 2026
- University of Illinois Astrophysics Colloquium — Urbana-Champaign, IL, Feb 2026
- Berkeley TAC Seminar — Berkeley, CA, Nov 2025
- Carnegie EPL Astronomy Seminar — Washington, DC, Sep 2024
- University of Chicago Geophysical Sciences Seminar — Chicago, IL, Dec 2023
- TCAN Meeting — Tucson, AZ, Nov 2023
- UW–Madison Monday Science Seminar — Madison, WI, Oct 2023
- University of Hawai’i SPLAT Seminar — Honolulu, HI, Sep 2023
- Star and Planet Formation Seminar, University of Michigan — online, Feb 2022
- Caltech Direct Imaging Group Meeting — online, Dec 2021
- Star Formation: From Clouds to Discs — Malahide, Ireland, Oct 2021
- Peking University KIAA Star and Planet Formation Group Meeting — Beijing, China, Dec 2018
Selected contributed talks and seminars
- Discs on the Exe — Exeter, UK, Jul 2026
- Planet Formation across Various Environments and Epochs — Garching, Germany, May 2026
- 2025 NHFP Symposium — Baltimore, MD, Oct 2025
- New York Area Exoplanets Meeting — New York, NY, May 2025
- KITP Conference: Planets on Edge — Santa Barbara, CA, Apr 2025 (video)
- 2024 NHFP Symposium — Pasadena, CA, Sep 2024
- 50 Years of Binaries and Discs: Lubow@75 — Las Vegas, NV, May 2024
- Princeton Thunch — Princeton, NJ, Oct 2023
- NRAO TUNA Talk — Charlottesville, VA, Oct 2023
- CfA SMA Seminar — Cambridge, MA, Sep 2023
- Harvard ITC Luncheon — Cambridge, MA, Sep 2023 (video)
- Origins Seminar — Tucson, AZ, Sep 2023 (video)
- Emerging Researchers in Exoplanet Science (ERES) — New Haven, CT, Jun 2023
- Athena++ Workshop — New York, NY, May 2023
- Planet Formation Group Meeting, University of Victoria — online, Feb 2022
- New Paradigms for Radiatively Efficient Accretion Disks — New York, NY, Dec 2021
- Five Years after HL Tau: A New Era in Planet Formation — online, Dec 2020
- New Horizons in Planetary Systems — Victoria, BC, Canada, May 2019
- 233rd AAS Meeting — Seattle, WA, Jan 2019
Press coverage
- ALMA Reveals Planets Can Form Under Harsh Radiation — NRAO News
- Ph.D. Candidate Turns Childhood Love of Night Sky Into Studying Disks — UNLV News
- It’s a Planet: New Evidence of Baby Planet in the Making — CfA News
- The Birth of Worlds — Scientific American
- The Epoch of Planet Formation, Times Twenty — NRAO News
Outreach and public engagement
- Instructor, STAR Space School for high school students: exoplanets and planet formation — Sep 2026
- Co-founder, speaker, and webmaster, Astronomy on Tap Las Vegas — 2018–2024
- Judge, Beal Bank Science Fair — 2022, 2023, 2024
- Visualization Specialist, Beijing Planetarium: rendered simulations for planetarium shows — 2020–2021
- Speaker, Public Science Seminar, Beijing Planetarium: “Mars exploration and planet formation” (in Chinese, ~200 attendees) — Feb 2021
- Author, Amateur Astronomer Magazine: “GW Ori: ALMA observation of an interesting three-body system” (in Chinese) — Oct 2020
- Presenter, UNLV Art in Science Exhibition — Jan 2020
- Organizer, Lunar Eclipse on the Strip, Las Vegas — Jan 2019
- Participant, AAS Astronomy Ambassadors Program — Jan 2019