Interview with Prof. Jie Deng

Q. What sparkled your journey into this field?

A. One of the biggest inspirations for me to enter this field was the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China . At that time, I was in my second year of high school. My hometown was not very close to Sichuan, but close enough that we strongly felt the earthquake. It was the first earthquake I had ever experienced, and it left a very deep impression on me.

I still remember how everyone evacuated from the building to the playground, and how every day the news reported the growing number of casualties. It was a painful and life-changing experience, and it became a collective memory for many people of my generation.

That experience made me want to understand Earth better. I kept asking myself simple questions: Why do earthquakes happen? Why can’t we predict them better? Why are we still seeing such huge casualties from natural disasters even in modern times?

When I applied to graduate school in 2014, this was something I wrote about in my research and personal statements. During my PhD, I worked in geoscience and seismology before later shifting toward the computational side. But the motivation to better understand these phenomena has always stayed with me.

Q.What has been the most awe-inspiring moment in your research ?

A. One of the most awe-inspiring things for me has been the discovery of exoplanets. Sometimes my brother brought astronomy magazines, and I remember being fascinated by images of stars and worlds beyond our solar system. During my time at Yale, I realized that people in astrophysics were actually detecting exoplanets. What once felt like science fiction suddenly became real. That really inspired me and influenced the direction of my research.

Another major moment for me was seeing how AI could transform scientific simulations. During my postdoc, our calculations were limited to a few hundred atoms. Then I came across research using machine-learning potentials and AI to accelerate simulations. AI has enabled simulations at scales that were previously computationally infeasible, in some cases reaching billions of atoms. That completely changed the way I thought about computational science.

One of my professors told me that life is short, so you should try to solve important problems in an interesting and innovative way. That is still what drives the research I work on today.

Q. If you had to list 3 ingredients for success in research, what would they be?

A. I think the most important ingredient for success in research is critical thinking. I was lucky to be surrounded by professors who always thought critically, and for the same problem you could hear many different perspectives, no matter how small or big it was.

The second ingredient is strong quantitative skills — especially maths and physics. Good mathematical and physical foundations help you think logically and critically. For my own research, strong mathematical and physical intuition has been especially valuable. So yes, quantitative reasoning is very important.

The third ingredient is being open-minded. Don’t limit yourself to one field. If I had only focused on earthquakes, I would never have moved toward exoplanets. People change, people shift, and research interests change over time. I think it’s important to stay open to new ideas. The world is very colorful and there are so many different possibilities

Q. If you could give one piece of advice to young scientists, what would that be?

A. I would first ask them whether they truly want to do science. Research can be very rewarding, but it can also be difficult and demanding. You may put in a huge amount of effort without much financial return, so it’s important to be clear about what you really want to pursue.

If you are determined to do it and have a clear mind, then you should follow your interests seriously. Occasionally I see people who want to pursue an industry job because it is better paid and has a better work-life balance. But they feel academia is a comfort zone, so they don’t want to step out of it. They don’t even give it a try because they are familiar with the people around them and the university. So, don’t stay in academia just because it feels familiar or comfortable.

In Europe, people usually have this gap year where they try different things. I think it’s important to explore different paths and understand what truly excites you.

In the end, you should try to find something you can still feel passionate about after 30 or 40 years, and then fully commit to it.

Q. What is your perspective on the field of geoastronomy? What do you think is its significance for current research ?

A. I thought the term "geoastronomy" itself was fun and very interesting because it clearly captures the connection between geoscience and astronomy.

From my perspective, it is a very exciting interdisciplinary field with a lot of opportunities. I admire the vision of Steve and Kevin - people who are building these connections across disciplines because many important problems require knowledge from both geoscience and astrophysics.

For example, in my talk I mentioned that some planets may contain enormous amounts of hydrogen-related material in their interiors, far beyond what people traditionally imagine from surface observations alone. Some assumptions commonly used in one community have not yet fully incorporated recent advances from neighboring fields because the knowledge sometimes propagates slowly across disciplines.

So, I’m very happy that there is a group of people who care, because it shows that the problems encompassed by geoastronomy are important. They’re urgent. I strongly support efforts that bring geoscience and astronomy together, because even though I’m not formally involved in geoastronomy, I am doing some work in a similar direction

In the end, we need people who can bridge disciplines so that we can better communicate, better share different knowledge, and have a more comprehensive view of exoplanets, super-Earths, et cetera.