Lisa Dang, Assistant Professor

Biography

Professor Dang studies exoplanets strikingly different from our Solar System planets and characterizes their climate with a variety of world class space-based and ground-based observatories, most excitingly with the recently launched JWST. Before the exoplanets era, the architecture of the Solar System’s planets has long been the primary inspiration for planet formation and evolution theories.

With over 5000 known exoplanets, there are now thousands of study cases to help us understand how planets form and evolve to ultimately understand how the Solar System fits in this broader context.

Research Interests

Exoplanets Atmosphere Characterization
Cartography of Exoplanets
Exoplanetary Gravitational Microlensing
Planetary Climate
Exoplanetary Demographics

Scholarly Research

Professor Dang’s research interests include using time-series observation of exoplanets to map their emission and characterize their atmospheres using transit and eclipse spectroscopy with space telescopes, detecting the Doppler shifts of planetary signals using high-resolution spectra with some of the largest ground-based telescopes and detecting exoplanets using the gravitational microlensing technique with the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Education

2022 PhD Physics, McGill University, Montréal, QC Canada
2016 BSc Honours Physics, McGill University, Montréal, QC Canada

Awards

2022-2024, Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship, NSERC
2022, L’Oréal Science Research Excellence Fellowship, L’Oréal-UNESCO
2024–2025: Principal Investigator, Canadian Space Agency JWST Cycle 2 Grant
2021–2023: Principal Investigator, Canadian Space Agency JWST Cycle 1 Grant
Principal Investigator, James Webb Space Telescope, GO Cycle 1 Proposal #2347 (24.9 hours)
Co-Investigator, James Webb Space Telescope Proposal, GO Cycle 3 #5268 (60 hours)
Co-Investigator, James Webb Space Telescope Proposal, GO Cycle 2 #3860 (44.3 hours)
Co-Investigator, James Webb Space Telescope, GO Cycle 1 Proposal #2488 (25 hours)
Co-Investigator, James Webb Space Telescope, GTO Cycle 1 Proposal #1201 (194.9 hours)

Professional Associations

Member, International Astronomical Union (IAU)
Member, Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA)
Member, Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP)
Member, Canadian Ariel Science Team (CAST)

Affiliations and Volunteer Work

Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics
Institute for Research on Exoplanets

Service

SOC Chair, Exoclimes Conference 2025
2018-2019 Women in Physics Canada Conference Committee
SOC Member, Exoclimes Conference 2023

Selected Publications

Dang, Lisa, Cowan, Nicolas B., Schwartz, Joel C., Rauscher, Emily, Zhang, Michael, Knutson, Heather A., Line, Michael, Dobbs-Dixon, Ian, Deming, Drake, Sundararajan, Sudarsan, Fortney, Jonathan J., Zhao, Ming. Detection of a westward hotspot offset in the atmosphere of hot gas giant CoRoT-2b. Nature Astronomy, volume 2, pp. 220-227 (2018).
Keating, Dylan, Cowan, Nicolas B., Dang, Lisa. Uniformly hot nightside temperatures on short-period gas giants. Nature Astronomy, volume 3, pp. 1092-1098 (2019).
Bell, Taylor J., Zhang, Michael, Cubillos, Patricio E., Dang, Lisa, Fossati, Luca, Todorov, Kamen O., Cowan, Nicolas B., Deming, Drake, Zellem, Robert T., Stevenson, Kevin B., Crossfield, Ian J.M., Dobbs-Dixon, Ian, Fortney, Jonathan J., Knutson, Heather A., Line, Michael R. Mass loss from the exoplanet WASP-12b inferred from Spitzer phase curves. MNRAS, volume 489, pp. 1995-2013 (2019).
Dang, Lisa, Calchi Novati, S., Carey, S., Cowan, N.B. Pixel level decorrelation in service of the Spitzer microlens parallax survey. MNRAS, volume 497, pp. 5309-5317 (2020).
Bell, Taylor J., Dang, Lisa, Cowan, Nicolas B., Bean, Jacob, Désert, Jean-Michel, Fortney, Jonathan J., Keating, Dylan, Kempton, Eliza, Kreidberg, Laura, Line, Michael R., Mansfield, Megan, Parmentier, Vivien, Stevenson, Kevin B., Swain, Mark, Zellem, Robert T. A comprehensive reanalysis of Spitzer's 4.5 μm phase curves, and the phase variations of the ultra-hot Jupiters MASCARA-1b and KELT-16b. MNRAS, volume 504, pp. 3316-3337 (2021).
Dang, Lisa, Bell, Taylor J., Cowan, Nicolas B., Thorngren, Daniel, Kataria, Tiffany, Knutson, Heather A., Lewis, Nikole K., Stassun, Keivan G., Fortney, Jonathan J., Agol, Eric, Laughlin, Gregory P., Burrows, Adam, Collins, Karen A., Deming, Drake, Jovmir, Diana, Langton, Jonathan, Rastegar, Sara, Showman, Adam P. Thermal Phase Curves of XO-3b: An Eccentric Hot Jupiter at the Deuterium Burning Limit. AJ, volume 163, 32 (2022).
Cadieux, Charles, Plotnykov, Mykhaylo, Doyon, René, Valencia, Diana, Jahandar, Farbod, Dang, Lisa, Turbet, Martin, Fauchez, Thomas J., Cloutier, Ryan, Cherubim, Collin, Artigau, Étienne, Cook, Neil J., Edwards, Billy, Hallatt, Tim, Charnay, Benjamin, Bouchy, François, Allart, Romain, Mignon, Lucile, Baron, Frédérique, Barros, Susana C.C., Benneke, Björn, Canto Martins, B.L., Cowan, Nicolas B., De Medeiros, J.R., Delfosse, Xavier, Delgado-Mena, Elisa, Dumusque, Xavier, Ehrenreich, David, Frensch, Yolanda G.C., González Hernández, J.I., Hara, Nathan C., Lafrenière, David, Lo Curto, Gaspare, Malo, Lison, Melo, Claudio, Mounzer, Dany, Passeger, Vera Maria, Pepe, Francesco, Poulin-Girard, Anne-Sophie, Santos, Nuno C., Sosnowska, Danuta, Suárez Mascareño, Alejandro, Thibault, Simon, Vaulato, Valentina, Wade, Gregg A., Wildi, François. New Mass and Radius Constraints on the LHS 1140 Planets: LHS 1140 b Is either a Temperate Mini-Neptune or a Water World. ApJL, volume 960, L3 (2024).
Cadieux, Charles, Doyon, René, MacDonald, Ryan J., Turbet, Martin, Artigau, Étienne, Lim, Olivia, Radica, Michael, Fauchez, Thomas J., Salhi, Salma, Dang, Lisa, Albert, Loïc, Coulombe, Louis-Philippe, Cowan, Nicolas B., Lafrenière, David, L'Heureux, Alexandrine, Piaulet-Ghorayeb, Caroline, Benneke, Björn, Cloutier, Ryan, Charnay, Benjamin, Cook, Neil J., Fournier-Tondreau, Marylou, Plotnykov, Mykhaylo, Valencia, Diana. Transmission Spectroscopy of the Habitable Zone Exoplanet LHS 1140 b with JWST/NIRISS. ApJL, volume 970, L2 (2024).