Earth Sciences | University of Cambridge

Updated on June 2, 2022

Welcome to my website!

I am a petrologist-geochemist-volcanologist from Sichuan China, currently working as a postdoc (PDRA) at University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

My research combines petrological observations, chemical analyses, thermodynamic/diffusion modelling (Python/Matlab), and high-temperature experiments to unravel:

(1) volcanoes: mechanisms of volcanic eruptions, eruptions sizes and styles, the architecture of volcano plumbing systems, and volcanic hazards

(2) volatiles in subduction-zone magmatism

(3) timescales of magmatic processes (diffusion chronometry) and geological events (Ar-Ar and U-Th dating)

(4) mantle temperature-lithology, and mantle upwelling (current project).

(5) REEs (rare earth elements) and magma-related ore generation

My research areas include Merapi volcano (Indonesia), Mount Erebus (Antarctica), Changbaishan volcano (China), and Mayon volcano (Philippines).

I obtained my bachelor degree (2012) in Geochemistry (with double major in art history), and master degree (2014) in Geochronology at Peking University, China. After that, I moved to Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore for a Ph.D. in petrology-volcanology (see my latest CV). My Ph.D. thesis focuses on investigating volcanic effusive-explosive transition at subduction-zone volcanoes using mineral apatite (check out our modelling tools on research projects and models/tools pages).

I obtained my Ph.D. degree in the end of 2019, and continued working as a research fellow at NTU till early 2021. In April 2021, I moved to Cambridge, U.K. as a postdoc at the Department of Earth Sciences, working on using ocean island basalts to estimate mantle potential temperatures (MC2 project funded by NERC).

I will officially start as an assistant professor (and museum curator) at the University of Hong Kong from October 2022. I'll be recruiting Ph.D. students and postdocs soon, so feel free to email me (wl413 AT cam.ac.uk) if you are interested. Adverts will soon be posted on this page.

p.s. I try to constantly update this website at the beginning/end of each month.

News

2022

I will start a new position (tenure-track assistant professor & museum curator) at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) from October 2022.

May

Check out our new paper in Geology about the cause of an explosive-effusive-explosive eruption transition at Rabaul volcano, Papua New Guinea, with insights from apatite

https://doi.org/10.1130/G50023.1

March 17th

I gave an invited talk over Zoom (in Chinese) for Southwest University (西北大学). The recorded talk can be found on "PRESENTATIONS" page.

February 24th

I gave an invited talk at the Bochum diffusion seminar series about applications of apatite diffusion chronometry to estimating magma ascent time-rates. See the link to the recorded talk on "PRESENTATIONS" page.

February

A new python package called pyAp is released!

See "MODELS/TOOLS" page for details.

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See more activities on "UPDATES" page

Feel free to email me:

wl413 AT cam.ac.uk