Ray Jayawardhana

Ray Jayawardhana is a Sri Lankan-born American astrophysicist, science communicator, and university administrator. Currently, he serves as provost and professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. Previously, from 2018 to 2023, he was the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Professor of Astronomy, and Hans A. Bethe Professor at Cornell University.^[1][2] The Main-belt asteroid 4668 Rayjay is named after him.

As provost of Johns Hopkins University, Jayawardhana has advanced the institution's research enterprise, academic programs, and student success. He has spearheaded numerous major initiatives, including the establishment of the Data Science and AI Institute, launch of the School of Government and Policy, expansion of the Bloomberg Distinguished Professorships program, HopGPT, the Provost's Fellows for Public Engagement program, and the Office of the Arts^[3].^[4]

Jayawardhana was born and raised in Sri Lanka, where he attended St. John's College^[5] and Royal College Colombo prior to pursuing higher education in the United States.

He received his B.S. degree from Yale University and his Ph.D. under Giovanni Fazio from Harvard University.^[6]

He was a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jayawardhana’s primary research areas include the formation and early evolution of stars, brown dwarfs, and planetary systems. He is the co-author of more than 180 scientific papers, with over 10,000 citations.^[7]

While a graduate student at Harvard, Jayawardhana led one of the two teams that discovered a dusty disk around HR 4796, a young star, with a large inner hole, which was possibly carved out during the planet formation processes.^[8] While he was a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, he and his collaborators discovered an edge-on protoplanetary disk in a young quadruple star system, using adaptive optics on the Gemini North telescope.^[9][10]

At UC Berkeley and as a faculty member at the Universities of Michigan and Toronto, Jayawardhana played a key role in establishing that young brown dwarfs undergo a T Tauri phase, similar to young Sun-like stars, with evidence for dusty disks and signatures of disk accretion and outflow. Disks have now also been found around sub-brown dwarfs or planemos. In September 2008, he and his collaborators reported the first direct image and spectroscopy of a likely extra-solar planet around a normal star.^[11] While serving as a dean at Cornell and provost at Johns Hopkins, Jayawardhana has continued to be active in research, publishing numerous papers on exoplanets and brown dwarfs using the James Webb Space Telescope and large ground-based telescopes.^[12]

In 2024, Jayawardhana and his team used the James Webb Space Telescope to identify six likely rogue worlds—objects with planet-like masses but untethered from any star's gravity—including the lightest ever with a dusty disk around it. These findings offered new evidence that the same cosmic processes that give birth to stars may also play a common role in making objects only slightly bigger than Jupiter.

In 2025, his research team discovered evidence of a growth spurt in a young rogue world, suggesting these mysterious objects continue to accumulate mass even after being ejected from their birth environments. The findings challenge conventional understanding of planet formation and evolution.

He is a core science team member for the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRISS instrument.

Jayawardhana’s research has earned numerous accolades, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Carl Sagan Medal from the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Sciences, the Rutherford Medal in Physics from the Royal Society of Canada, and the Nicholson Medal from the American Physical Society.

Jayawardhana is an award-winning popular science writer. His articles have been published in The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Muse, Scientific American, and elsewhere. His popular science book Strange New Worlds was the basis for “The Planet Hunters” television documentary on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Jayawardhana held a Miller Research Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, before becoming an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. He then joined the University of Toronto, where he spent a decade on the faculty and held a Canada Research Chair. He also served as a senior advisor on science engagement to the University of Toronto president and founded the Science Leadership Program to enhance the communications and leadership skills of academic scientists.^[13]

In early 2014, Jayawardhana was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Science at York University in Toronto.^[14] In June 2018, he was named the 22nd dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University.^[12]

In July 2023, Johns Hopkins University announced Jayawardhana’s appointment as its 16th provost and chief academic officer. He also serves as a Professor of Physics and Astronomy.

Jayawardhana serves on the Board of Trustees of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation^[15].

• Science Writing Award of the American Institute of Physics (2003)^[16]
• Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics (2008)
• E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship (2009)^[17] awarded to enhance the career development of outstanding and highly promising university faculty who are earning a strong international reputation for original research,^[18] from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, presented by Prime Minister Stephen Harper at a ceremony in Ottawa on March 16, 2009.^[19]
• Canada's "Top 40 Under 40" (2009)^[20]
• Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University (2011-12)^[21]
• Rutherford Memorial Medal of the Royal Society of Canada (2013)^[22]
• Book Award of the Science Writers & Communicators of Canada (2013)
• Guggenheim Fellowship (2014)^[23]
• Selby Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science (2015)^[24]
• Dwight Nicholson Medal of the American Physical Society (2018)^[25]
• Carl Sagan Medal (2020)^[26]
• Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency (2023)
• The Main-belt asteroid 4668 Rayjay is named after him.

• Star Factories: The Birth of Stars and Planets (2000), Heinemann/Raintree, ISBN 9780739822227
• Young Stars near Earth: Progress and Prospects, editors: Ray Jayawardhana and Thomas P. Greene, (2001), Astronomical Society of the Pacific, ISBN 9781583815809
• Star Formation at High Angular Resolution, editors: Michael Burton, Ray Jayawardhana and Tyler Bourke, (2004), Astronomical Society of the Pacific, ISBN 9781583811610
• Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life beyond Our Solar System (2011), Princeton University Press, ISBN 9780691158075
• Neutrino Hunters: The Thrilling Chase for a Ghostly Particle to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe (2013), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 9780374535216
• Child of the Universe (2020), Penguin Random House, ISBN 9781524717544

• Personal home page
• Profile at science.ca
• Profile in Wired magazine
• Big Ideas lecture on "Alien Planets" Archived November 23, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
• Kruger Cowne, agents, profile