CV

Education

• Ph.D in Astronomy, The Ohio State University, Expected Graduation: 2029
• B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, Minor in Philosophy, Sharif University of Technology, 2023

Awards & Honors

• LSST Discovery Alliance Data Science Fellowship, 2025-present
• Graduate Student Fellowship, The Ohio State University, 2023

Publications

• Tajer, H., Wang, J., et al. (2025). “Forging Iron Hearts: Exploring Pathways to Form Mercury-like Planets via N-body Simulations.” In prep.
• Tajer, H., Rein, H., Lu, T., et al. (2025). “Collisional Fragmentation Module in REBOUNDx” In prep.
• Lu, T., Tajer, H., Hernandez, D. M., et al. (2025). “Collisional Fragmentation Support in TRACE.” Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society, 9(5), 110. https://doi.org/10.3847/2515-5172/add525

Research Experience

• 2023–Present: Graduate Student, The Ohio State University
  • Studying galactic chemical evolution through manganese abundances
    • Modeling galactic chemical evolution with a two-process model based on Type Ia and core-collapse supernova enrichments
    • Using metallicity-dependent yields for manganese to model its abundances
    • Investigating a model involving two distinct populations of white dwarf progenitors for Mn production
  • Studying the formation of iron-rich, Mercury-like planets via N-body simulations
    • Mercury has a core mass fraction (CMF) of nearly 0.7, more than double that of the Earth (~0.3).
    • Exoplanetary counterparts to Mercury exhibit extremely high densities, and their origins remain unknown
    • This project aims to study different formation pathways for Mercury-like planets, focusing on late-stage planet formation and collisional fragmentation
  • REBOUNDX Collisional Fragmentation Module
    • Developing a collision prescription in the open-source package REBOUNDx, an extension to the N-body code REBOUND
    • This module accounts for various collision outcomes, such as fragmentation and hit-and-run events

Oral Presentations and Talks

• 2025: Great Lakes Exoplanet Area Meeting (GLEAM), University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, WI)
  • How Did Mercury Get Its Big Iron Heart?

Poster Presentations

• 2025: Sagan Summer Workshop, California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA)

Teaching Experience

• 2025: Teaching Assistant for Code/Astro 2025
• 2024–Present: Graduate Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University
  • Teaching a general education course, Intro to Earth Sciences

Service and Leadership

• 2025: Public Planetarium Show on Exoplanets, Arne Slettebak Planetarium at Ohio State
• 2025-present: Representative of School of Earth Sciences at the Sloan Center for Systemic Change Graduate Advisory Group
• 2023–2024: Member of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, School of Earth Science, The Ohio State University
• 2020-2022: Director of Yarigaran, Sharif University Of Technology

Technical Skills

• Programming language: Python, C, C++, Unix, MATLAB, FORTRAN

Languages

• Farsi: Native
• English: Proficient
• French: Intermediate

Certificates

• 2025 Sagan Exoplanet Summer Workshop: Silver Jubilee: Exoplanet Demographics
• Code/Astro 2024: Certificate of Completion
• 2024 Sagan Exoplanet Summer Workshop: Advances in Direct Imaging: From Young Jupiters to Habitable Earths

References

Dr. Ji Wang
Associate Professor, Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University
wang.12220@osu.edu