From April 4 to 5, Hao Fu and Jiachen Ding of our school, together with Huigen Liu of the School of Astronomy and Space Science, attended the Strategic Development Workshop on Planetary Atmospheres in Beijing at the invitation of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University. The workshop brought together more than 60 scholars from major planetary atmosphere research institutions across China. Participants engaged in in‑depth discussions on topics including "historical and future planetary atmosphere exploration missions at home and abroad," "research advances and key scientific questions in planetary atmospheres," "independent development of planetary atmosphere models," "planetary atmosphere observation technologies,” and “teaching in planetary atmospheres."
Jiachen Ding delivered a presentation titled "Scattering and Radiative Transfer by Atmospheric Particles." His research group focuses on atmospheric optics and radiative transfer principles, addressing frontier topics such as quantitative retrievals of Martian dust and ice clouds, and plans to develop a planetary atmosphere radiative transfer model.
Hao Fu presented a talk titled "Laboratory Simulations of Atmospheric Motions on Earth and Planets." His research group specializes in geophysical fluid dynamics and has recently employed fluid simulation experiments as a bridge to extend studies from Earth’s atmosphere to convection-wave-vortex interaction on gas giant planets.
Planetary atmospheres represent a new research direction under development at our school. This field not only directly supports China's deep‑space exploration, but also, through comparative planetary studies, provides valuable references for understanding Earth system science.
It is worth noting that over a dozen Nanjing University alumni attended the workshop, including Huigen Liu, Li Dong, Jing Xiao, Jiachen Ding, Hao Gu, Hao Fu, Liangliang Yuan, Lixiang Gu, Yanhong Lai, Yueyun Ouyang, Yujie Zhou, Sicheng Wei, and Yifan Liu. They are primarily from the atmospheric sciences and astronomy disciplines and have achieved notable successes in areas such as the development of Mars numerical models and the observation and simulation of exoplanetary atmospheres. Faculty members from our school engaged in productive exchanges with the alumni, encouraging them to maintain close ties with their alma mater, strengthen collaboration, and recommend outstanding talents. A group photo of the alumni was taken after the workshop.
