Jiayin Dong honored with 2022 Penn State Alumni Dissertation Award
Graduate student Jiayin Dong is a 2022 recipient of the Alumni Association Dissertation Award for her dissertation “Tracing Dynamical Evolution of Planetary Systems: From Protoplanets to Young and Mature Planetary Systems.” Jiayin’s work has advanced our understanding of the origins of close-in giant planets, the formation and spin rate of giant planets, and planetary sculpting of debris disks. The Alumni Association Dissertation Award provides funding and recognition to outstanding full-time doctor of philosophy students who have passed their comprehensive exams, have received approval of the dissertation topic and are within their final year of enrollment. This award is considered to be among the most prestigious available to Penn State graduate students and recognizes outstanding achievement in scholarship and professional accomplishment. Congratulations, Jiayin!
Jiayin Dong summarized her work to non-experts as follows:
Exoplanetary science is a field full of surprises. The discovery of giant planets orbiting much closer to their stars than Mercury’s orbit of the Sun inspires my thesis work to build and test new planet formation and evolution models. I use cutting-edge numerical simulations to model planet formation and make predictions, and then use state-of-the-art observing facilities to discover and characterize exoplanets and test my proposed theories. I discovered 50 such planets using a NASA space telescope called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, including one on an extremely elliptical orbit and one of the youngest known close-in planets. These studies shed light on the origins of giant planets close to their stars and provide evidence that they have multiple origins. My work on giant planets beyond the Solar System helps us better understand our place in the universe. The study of giant planets’ formation processes that might affect habitability completes our picture of Habitable Worlds in the presence of giant planets. I would like to thank the Penn State Alumni Association for recognizing the importance of my work. I will continue the exploration of exoplanetary systems at the Flatiron Institute as a Flatiron Research Fellow in the Center for Computational Astrophysics, starting this summer.
