Research Interests
My research interests fall into the following two general areas:
1) Earth's response to glaciation and deglaciation on time-scales from
100,000 years (i.e., a glacial cycle) to 10's years (e.g., the ongoing ice melting
in Antarctica and Greenland), including deformation of Earth's mantle and crust,
sea-level change, gravity anomalies change, and polar motion. This research has
two main goals: i) to understand the Earth's mantle rheology and viscosity by modeling
the observations of relative sea-level changes, crustal deformation (via GPS) and
gravity change (e.g., GRACE) that are caused by (de)glaciation processes; ii) to
understand the impact of deglaciation on sea level changes and land motions. We develop
the open source (via github) numerical modeling software package CitcomSVE that runs
efficiently and accurately on massively parallel computers.
2) Dynamical evolution of terrestrial planets including Earth, Mars, Venus, the Moon,
...). Thermal convection in the planetary mantles is the main physical processes that
control the evolution of terrestrial planets. We are particularly interested in
formation of long-wavelength convective structures in the mantle (e.g., subducted slabs
and large low shear-wave velocity provinces (LLSVP), as imaged in seismic tomography)
and their surface
manifestation in large-scale tectonics (e.g., supercontinent cycles throughout the
Earth's history), surface topography and volcanism (e.g., crustal dichotomy and
Tharsis Rise on Mars, and mare basalts on the Moon), and gravity anomalies.
On the planetary science side, I am particularly interested in understanding the
lunar interior structure as possibly inferred from observations of tidal deformation
and tidal observations. I am also very much interested in the formation of
lunar fossil bulge (i.e., degree-2
shape and gravity anomalies of the Moon) and its implication for the evolution of
lunar orbit.
To study the dynamics of mantle convection and its surface manifestation,
we use both instability analyses and numerical simulation in our research. We
were the main developer of open source convection modeling package CitcomS which
like CitcomSVE mentioned early was one of the first open source codes and runs
efficiently on massively parallel computers.
I also have strong interests in high performance computing and numerical analysis.
See an example of how a
planet is cut to fit to parallel computers. Here is
for multigrid .
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Our research has been supported by the NSF, NASA, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Sloan Foundation..