Astronomy and astrophysics department welcomes new faculty for fall 2025
The Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics welcomes its newest tenure-line faculty members.
Renyu Hu, associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics, investigates the atmospheres, climates, and evolution of exoplanets, with the goal of identifying and characterizing potentially habitable environments within and beyond the solar system. He combines advanced numerical modeling with telescopic, satellite, and in-situ measurements to study planetary and exoplanet atmospheres, and he leads James Webb Space Telescope programs that deliver groundbreaking observations of rocky and low-temperature worlds. His planetary atmosphere models also help define the measurements needed for NASA’s future missions, including the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
Hu has received the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Edward Stone Award for outstanding research contributions and NASA’s Early Career Public Achievement Medal. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program Analysis Group. His research has been published journals such as Nature Geoscience, the Astrophysical Journal, and the Astronomical Journal.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Hu was a scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 2015 to 2025, where he supervised the Exoplanet Systems group. He was a NASA Hubble Fellow from 2013 to 2015. In 2013, he earned his doctoral degree in planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in astrophysics from Tsinghua University in China in 2009, a Diplôme d’Ingénieur from École Centrale Pairs in 2009, and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics from Tsinghua University.
Charlotte Ward, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics, studies supermassive black hole formation and growth using time-domain survey data. Her research focuses on developing computational techniques for joint analysis of ground and space-based surveys and applying those techniques to understand the formation and evolution of accretion disks in ‘state-changing’ active galactic nuclei (AGN), variable AGN in dwarf galaxies, and tidal disruption events.
In addition, Ward is passionate about outreach and equity. In 2024 she was awarded the Equity Prize for Outreach by the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. Her research has been published in journals such as Nature Astronomy, the Astrophysical Journal, and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Ward was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University where she worked closely with the Rubin Observatory software team. She earned her doctoral degree in astronomy from the University of Maryland at College Park in 2022, and a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from the University of Sydney in Australia in 2016.