معرفی
James Owen is a Reader in Astrophysics at the Department of Physics within the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial College London. He holds a Senior Royal Society University Research Fellowship and previously served as a Hubble Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a CITA Fellow in Toronto. His research focuses on planet formation, extrasolar planets, and accretion disc physics, with particular emphasis on atmospheric escape mechanisms and protoplanetary disc structures. He is affiliated with the Astrophysics Group and the Physics Permanent Researchers at Imperial College.
His key research interests include understanding how close-in super-Earths and mini-Neptunes form and evolve under intense stellar irradiation, driving atmospheric evaporation. He also investigates structures in protoplanetary discs observed via high-resolution imaging, linking these to planet formation processes. His work combines analytic theory and simulations to study hydrodynamic instabilities and disc dynamics.
Notable awards include the Hubble Fellowship and CITA Fellowship. His recent work highlights the role of disc photoevaporation on giant planet migration and the observational signatures of embedded planets. He actively contributes to missions like JWST and UV-SCOPE for exoplanet characterization.
- Key affiliations: Astrophysics Group, Physics Permanent Researchers, Physics of Universe
- Labs: Blackett Laboratory at South Kensington Campus
Future research directions include analyzing the growing dataset of protoplanetary discs and advancing models of exoplanet atmospheric evolution through neural network emulations.
