Xiaodong Song

SCHOOL OF EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCES, PEKING UNIVERSITY • Chair Professor

Office Address:
Science Building 2

E-mail:
xdsong@pku.edu.cn

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Personal Profile

Peking University Chair Professor

Ph.D. of California Institute of Technology (1994)

Essential Information

Research Interests

Focus on seismology and studies of the Earth’s deep interior, including studies of structure and dynamics of the Earth’s core and lower most mantle, and lithosphere structure and tectonics of China and east Asia. The research relies primarily on seismic data analyses and seismic imaging with both forward modeling and tomographic inversion approaches with inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary collaborations.

Main research topics include:

l  Seismic imaging methods (noise interferometry, surface waves, body waves, receiver functions, full waves, joint inversions, array processing, machine learning)

l  Lithosphere structure and tectonics of China and East Asia

l  Nature of the core-mantle boundary

l  Structure of the Earth’s core (anisotropy of the inner core)

l  Rotation and motion of the Earth’s inner core

l  Temporal changes of geophysical observations and Earth’s media

l  Earthquake processes, forecasting and hazard analyses


Educational Background

l  University of Science and Technology of China, B.S., Geophysics, June 1986

l  California Institute of Technology, M.S., Geophysics, May 1991

l  California Institute of Technology, Ph.D., Geophysics with Computer Science Minor, May 1994

 

Employments and Affiliations

u  1994-1999 Postdoctoral Fellow, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University; also Visiting Investigator at Dept. of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institute of Washington, USA

u  1996-1999 Storke-Doherty Lecturer, Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University; and Associate Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, USA

u  1999-2003 Assistant Professor (tenure-track), Dept. of Geology, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA

u  2003-2008 Associate Professor (with tenure), Dept. of Geology, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA

u  2008-2020 Professor (with tenure), Dept. of Geology, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA

u  2020-Present Peking University Chair Professor (with tenure), Beijing, China

 

Honors and Achievements

u  1989-1992 Sir Run Run Shaw (of Hong Kong) Graduate Fellowship, Caltech 

u  1994-1996 Lamont-Doherty Postdoctoral Fellowship, Columbia U. 

u  1996-1999 Storke-Doherty Lecturership, Columbia U.

u  1996 The work on the rotation of the Earth's inner core (Song and Richards, Nature, 1996) was named as a 1996 Break Through of the Year by SCIENCE magazine. It also won the 1996 Award for Science and Technology by PopularScience magazine.

u  1996 Doornbos Prize by the International Union of Geophysics and Geodesy committee on Studies of Earth Deep Interior (SEDI) for the work on inner core rotation.

u  1997 Science and Technology Agency (STA) Fellow, the Research Development Corporation of Japan

u  1998 Outstanding Overseas Young Scientist Award by the NSF of China

u  2000 Work on inner core rotation was named as one of most important science discoveries in the 20th century by DISCOVER magazine.

u  2005 Science paper by Zhang et al. was selected as DISCOVER's 100 Top Science Stories of the year.

u  2006-2007 Associate, Center for Advanced Study, UIUC

u  2010-2020 Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Nanjing U., Wuhan U., Peking U.   

u  2016 The work on equatorial anisotropy of the inner-inner core was selected as a representative achievement from China in 2015 by Chinese Academy of Sciences and was highlighted as “Year in Review 2015” by Encyclopedia Britannica.

u  2016 Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) Distinguished Lectureship

 

Teaching Experiences

u  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1999-2020, 21 Years) (Undergraduate and Graduate Courses): Geology for Engineers, Introduction to Geophysics, Methods in Applied Geophysics, Introduction to Seismology, Physics of Earth’s Interior.

u  Graduate School, Chinese Academy of Sciences (1999 Summer School): Physics of Earth’s Interior (Graduate)

u  Nanjing University (2012): Introduction to Seismology (Undergraduate), Physics of Earth’s Interior (Graduate).

u  Wuhan University (2016): Physics of Earth’s Interior (Graduate), Frontiers of Geophysical Research with Instructions on Scientific Writing (Graduate).

u  Peking University (2021-): Introduction to Earth Science - Geophysics and Space Physics (Undergraduate), Physics of Earth’s Interior (Graduate).

 

Professional Service

l  Editor-in-Chief: Earthquake Science

l  Associate Editor: Earth and Planetary Physics, Acta Geologica Sinica.

l  Guest (co-)Editor: Earthquake Science, Tectonophysics, Terrestrial, Atmospheric, and Oceanic Sciences.

l  Editorial Board Member: Progress in Natural Sciences, Earthquake Science (Seismo. Soc. China), Earth Science (J. China U. Geosci. and Springer). 

l  Member and Chair, IRIS Global Seismic Network Standing Committee.

l  Associate Chair and Chair, International Professionals for the Advancement of Chinese Earth Sciences (IPACES)

l  Delegate to the U.S.-China Coordinating Meeting for Earthquake Studies (2007).

l  (Co-)Convener and (Co-)Chair, American Geophysical Union (AGU) (1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2008, 2010).  

l  Program Committee, AGU West Pacific Meeting (2006, 2010). Sino-US Earthquake Studies Workshop (2008).

l  Co-convener, Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS)  (2016-2019).