Prof. Ruobing Dong of the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA) at Peking University was elected as a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada, the pre-eminent body of independent scholars, researchers and creative individuals in Canada.
The Royal Society of Canada celebrates the elected researchers with the country’s highest academic honor. The peer-elected recipients are chosen for their academic excellence and their remarkable contributions to the arts, humanities and sciences, and to Canadian public life. Current members include Nobel Prize winners James Peebles, Geoffrey Hinton, Donna Strickland, and John Polanyi.
Ruobing Dong
Prof. Ruobing Dong has long been engaged in research in the field of planetary sciences, with a primary focus on how planets form. In February 2020, he was awarded the Sloan Research Fellowship. In August 2024, he returned to China from the University of Victoria in Canada and joined Peking University as a full-time faculty member. He is a leader in the field of planet-forming disks, with research that integrates observational data with numerical simulations to predict and interpret disk structures and signposts of planets.
The Royal Society of Canada has elected Dong because “Dong is one of the world’s leading young astrophysicists in exoplanet science and has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of planetary origins. He explores how planets form around young stars by studying the signatures of planet formation in their birth cradles. By pioneering a blend of cutting-edge observations, numerical simulations and machine learning, he uniquely bridges the theoretical and observational communities, significantly advancing the field of planet formation.”
Prof. Dong remarks on the motivations of his research, “When we image the dusty disks around young stars, we catch planets in the act of being born. By combining observations from the world’s most powerful telescopes with innovative simulations and machine learning, my team traces the faint signatures of newborn worlds and, ultimately, helps answer the timeless question: Where do we come from?”
News source: https://rsc-src.ca/en/news/royal-society-canada-announces-its-class-2025-new-fellows-and-college-members
