Publications

Automated list

• ORCID ID
• Google Scholar
• ADS
• ArXiv

Maintained list (updated 2026-11-04)

★ Highlighted paper; * equal contribution; † corresponding author.

Journal Articles

• ★ Causes of Hot Jupiter Inflation from Causal Discovery

  Z Jin†, M Ali-Dib, Y Zheng, M Pasquato, BL Davis, AV Macciò

  The Astronomical Journal 172, 208 (2026)
• ★ Causal Reversal in the $M_\bullet-\sigma_0$ Relation: Implications for High-redshift Supermassive Black Hole Mass Estimates

  BL Davis, S More, Z Jin†, M Pasquato, AV Macciò, F Yuan

  The Astrophysical Journal 1000, 100 (2026)
• Bridging simulations and observations: New insights into galaxy formation simulations via out-of-distribution detection and Bayesian model comparison

  L Zhou†, ST Radev, WH Oliver, A Obreja, Z Jin, T Buck

  Astronomy & Astrophysics 701, A44 (2025)
• ★ Causal evidence for the primordiality of colours in trans-Neptunian objects

  BL Davis*†, M Ali-Dib*, Y Zheng*, Z Jin*, K Zhang, AV Macciò

  Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters 543, L34-L42 (2025)
• ZTF IC 10 Variable Catalog

  Z Jin†, JD Gelfand

  The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series 278, 31 (2025)
• ★ Causal Discovery in Astrophysics: Unraveling Supermassive Black Hole and Galaxy Coevolution

  Z Jin†, M Pasquato*, BL Davis*, T Deleu, Y Luo, C Cho, P Lemos, L Perreault-Levasseur, Y Bengio, X Kang, AV Macciò, Y Hezaveh

  The Astrophysical Journal 979, 212 (2025)
• Identification of Intermediate-mass Black Hole Candidates among a Sample of Sd Galaxies

  BL Davis†, AW Graham, R Soria, Z Jin, ID Karachentsev, VE Karachentseva, E D’Onghia

  The Astrophysical Journal 971, 123 (2024)
• HELLO project: high-z evolution of large and luminous objects

  S Waterval†, AV Macciò, T Buck, A Obreja, C Cho, Z Jin, BL Davis, KL Dixon, X Kang

  Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 533, 1463-1484 (2024)
• Quantitatively rating galaxy simulations against real observations with anomaly detection

  Z Jin†, AV Macciò, N Faucher, M Pasquato, T Buck, KL Dixon, N Arora, M Blank, P Vulanovic

  Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 529, 3536-3549 (2024)
• Discovery of a Planar Black Hole Mass Scaling Relation for Spiral Galaxies

  BL Davis†, Z Jin

  The Astrophysical Journal Letters 956, L22 (2023)

Machine Learning Conference and Workshop Papers

• ★ Causal Discovery of Latent Variables in Galactic Archaeology

  Z Jin*†, Y Lu*, Y-S Ting, Y Zheng, T Buck

  ICML Machine Learning for Astrophysics Workshop (2025); arXiv:2507.00134
• Beyond Causal Discovery for Astronomy: Learning Meaningful Representations with Independent Component Analysis

  Z Jin†, M Pasquato, BL Davis, AV Macciò, Y Hezaveh

  NeurIPS Causal Representation Learning Workshop (2024); arXiv:2410.14775
• Causa prima: cosmology meets causal discovery for the first time

  M Pasquato†, Z Jin, P Lemos, BL Davis, AV Macciò

  NeurIPS Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences Workshop (2023); arXiv:2311.15160
• Discovering Black Hole Mass Scaling Relations with Symbolic Regression

  Z Jin†, BL Davis

  NeurIPS Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences Workshop (2023); arXiv:2310.19406
• Learning the Principle of Least Action with Reinforcement Learning

  Z Jin*†, JYY Lin*, SF Li

  AAAI Spring Symposium on Combining Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with Physical Sciences (2021); CEUR Workshop Proceedings 2964, extended abstract

Submitted Manuscript

• ★ Causal Discovery Reveals Latent Structure in Galactic Chemodynamics

  Z Jin, Y Lu, Y-S Ting, Y Zheng, T Buck

  Submitted to ApJ, October 2026; extends the 2025 galactic-archaeology workshop study

Conferences, Workshops, and talks

• Second Annual Cosmic Horizons Conference
  Charlottesville, USA - Jul 2026 - Contributed talk

• KIAA, Peking University
  Beijing, China - Jul 2026 - Seminar

• Nanjing University
  Nanjing, China - Jun 2026 - Seminar

• Shanghai Normal University
  Shanghai, China - May 2026 - Seminar

• Annual Shanghai Astronomical Society Meeting
  Shanghai, China - May 2026 - Contributed talk

• 3rd Conference on Galaxy and AGN Coevolution
  Nanjing, China - Dec 2025 - Contributed talk

• Shanghai Astronomical Observatory
  Shanghai, China - Oct 2025 - Seminar

• 3rd Conference of Machine Learning and AI Applications in Astronomy
  Yichang, China - Oct 2025 - Contributed talk

• 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society
  Washington D.C., USA - Jan 2025 - Dissertation talk

• NeurIPS 2024, Causal Representation Learning Workshop
  Vancouver, Canada - Dec 2024 - Poster presentation

• Ciela Institute, Université de Montréal
  Montréal, Canada - Feb-Mar 2024 - Visiting Student

• NeurIPS 2023, Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences Workshop
  New Orleans, USA - Dec 2023 - Poster presentation

• Astroinformatics, INAF Observatory of Capodimonte
  Naples, Italy - Oct 2023 - Contributed talk

• CZS Summer School, Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) Heidelberg
  Heidelberg, Germany - Aug 2023 - Poster presentation

• Cosmic Connections Symposium, Flatiron Institute
  New York, USA - May 2023 - Poster presentation

• Timescales in Astrophysics, New York University Abu Dhabi
  Abu Dhabi, UAE - Jan 2023 - LOC

• UAE Graduate Student Research conference (GSRC) 2021
  Remote - Jun 2021 - Contributed talk

• AAAI Spring Symposium on Combining Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with Physical Sciences
  Remote - Mar 2021 - Contributed talk