This month, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) announced the naming of asteroid 718863 as “Zhouwenjie” in honor of ZHOU Wenjie, a 2019 undergraduate and 2022 master’s graduate from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Fudan University. In WG Small Body Nomenclature Bulletin (Volume 5, #20), the asteroid located in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter orbits the Sun every 4.34 years, symbolizing Zhou’s enduring contributions to amateur astronomy.
As a 1990s-born graduate, Zhou was once the president of Fudan’s Poetry Society and was also an active member of the Fudan Astronomy Society. Today, he works on the cutting edge of AI large language models and speech synthesis, writing what he calls “an extraordinary and playful life story that spans multiple disciplines.”
How did his passion for astronomy grow?
Discovered in August 2017 by amateur astronomer LIAO Xi using the Xingming Observatory’s half-meter telescope, the asteroid, after numbered in 2024, now has been named to acknowledge Zhou’s dedication and significant discoveries within the amateur astronomy community.
Naming Announcement of Asteroid “Zhouwenjie”
Zhou’s astronomy journey began at the time when he was in Fudan, where he joined the Popular Supernova Project (PSP) of Xingming Observatory in Urumqi, Xinjiang, as an undergraduate.
“Astronomy isn’t always dazzling night skies. Sometimes it’s just black-and-white noise,” he said. Different from some of his peers who were able to achieve discoveries after examining merely a few thousand images, Zhou characterized himself as “unlucky yet fortunate”. After painstakingly going through more than 160,000 images, he finally made his first significant discovery: the extragalactic nova AT 2021yul.
Through the Xingming Sky Survey Project (XOSS), Zhou has discovered hundreds of new celestial bodies. These findings encompass diverse types — from comets (Nanshan-Hahn), near-Earth objects, and transient sources to variable stars, exoplanets, tidal disruption events, and microlensing events.
Based on some of these discoveries, Zhou has also collaborated with astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts both at home and abroad to publish multiple academic articles, astronomers’ telegrams and research notes. His collaborative research on supernova SN 2023ixf was even published in Nature in 2023. (Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06843-6）
ZHOU Wenjie went stargazing with the Fudan Astronomy Society
The initial spark for Zhou’s astronomical passion came through Fudan’s Siyuan Project. As part of this program, which combines volunteer service with field research, he traveled to teach in northwestern Gansu province. It was there, beneath the breathtakingly clear night sky, that his deep connection to astronomy began.
Later, he joined the Fudan Astronomy Society, and together with his fellow students, he photographed and marveled at the stars. He has also co-written many popular science articles, hoping to inspire others to develop interest in astronomy.
From Linguistics to Data Science
At Fudan, Zhou’s learning was very interdisciplinary. He majored in linguistics but pursued a second degree in data science.
Drawn to Professor CHEN Zhongmin’s rigorous teaching, Zhou immersed himself in phonetics, and dialect studies. Interested in dialect research, dialect synthesis technology and dialect inheritance, he contributed to theShanghai Chronicles · Folk Customs and Dialect Annals · Dialect Volume.
Shanghai Chronicles · Folk Customs and Dialect Annals · Dialect Volume
Zhou pursued a minor in data science to combine his linguistics expertise with practical computer science applications. This choice came with a challenge: the minor required Advanced Math, which he hadn’t needed for his primary degree. Undeterred, he took the math course in his junior year, started the minor in his senior year, and finished it while in graduate school. He vividly remembers, “When everyone was taking graduation photos, I was still rushing to finish the minor’s thesis.”
After obtaining his master’s degree, Zhou commenced his tenure at iFLYTEK, an AI company in China, renowned for its cutting-edge speech and language technologies. There he primarily worked on resources and technologies related to multilingual speech synthesis and contributed to the development of AI-powered large speech models.
“Constructing a high-quality multilingual speech library requires a deep understanding of the rationale behind each decision and process,” Zhou remarked. “Speech synthesis is not merely a technical endeavor—it also hinges on the foundational principles of linguistics.”
From building speech databases to analyzing user preferences, from conducting synthesis evaluations and incorporating expert feedback, the knowledge of phonetics, grammar, and pragmatics Zhou acquired in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Fudan University proved to be instrumental core competencies in his professional work.
ZHOU Wenjie shared his new research and ideas with his classmates in Rooms 701-702, West Sub-building, Guanghua Towers
Zhou attributes his success to Fudan’s culture of intellectual freedom and the environment it provided for his professional growth. “Don’t let labels limit you. What matters is maintaining a relaxed curiosity.” His story embodies the synergy between humanities and sciences—a poet and astronomer whose namesake now travels the cosmos.
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Writer: GAO Xinyi
Proofreader: YANG Xinrui
Editor: WANG Mengqi, LI Yijie
