A Biographical Sketch of Yaping Shao
By Martina Klose, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
For his exceptional achievements in aeolian research, his outstanding guidance and mentorship in educating the next generations of aeolian researchers, including myself, and his exemplary work attitude and dedication, Yaping has been awarded the ISAR Distinguished Career Award.
Yaping has been internationally active in research from the very beginning. He did his Bachelor of Science in atmospheric science at Zhongshan University in China in 1981. From there he moved on to completing his Diploma (Master equivalent) in Meteorology at the University of Bonn in Germany in 1986 and in 1990 he did his PhD at Flinders University of South Australia. Right afterwards, he assumed a position as a research associate at the Centre for Environmental Mechanics at CSIRO in Australia. Five years later in 1995, he took on a position at the School of Mathematics at the University of New South Wales, Australia, initially as a Lecturer, then as Senior Lecturer and eventually as Associate Professor (tenured). Since 2007, he is full professor at the Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology at the University of Cologne in Germany.
Yaping has brought a wealth of progress and breakthroughs in our understanding and the formalization of the physics of aeolian processes, for example on the process of saltation, the threshold friction velocity, dust emission for which he has proposed three novel physics-based dust emission parameterizations, or the impact of turbulence on aeolian processes. His contributions have clearly led to paradigm shifts in the aeolian research community. Throughout his career, Yaping’s exceptional research has been recognized through numerous prestigious awards and honors. He has received scholarships from the Chinese Government (1982), the German Academic Exchange Service (1984), Flinders University (1986), the University of New South Wales (Anthony Mason Fellowship, 1995) and the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (1998). He is a Distinguished International Expert for the Chinese International Expert Office (1996, 1999, 2001), Tottori University, Japan (2012) and Ben-Gurion University, Israel (2016). In 2009, he was elected as Academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences and he has received the Flinders Alumni Award. Yaping is Adjunct Professor at Beijing Normal University and Lanzhou University in China, at Griffith University in Australia, and member of the Chinese Academy of Science.
Yaping has given inspiration to many colleagues and a large number of students and early-career researchers, many of them still active in aeolian research. Since 1999, Yaping has taught about 20 courses at three universities (University of New South Wales, City University of Hong Kong, and the University of Cologne) covering themes from statistics, data analysis and visualization, and numerical methods, over atmospheric boundary layer, air pollution, atmospheric dynamics and its modeling, to surface hydrology, land surface, and climate. At the University of Cologne, he has served as the chairman of the Bachelor Examination Committee and of the International Masters of Environmental Science. Yaping has supervised more than 20 research fellows, 55 PhD/MSc students, and 75 BSc students. His supervisions include, for example, a project in WASCAL (West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use), a collaborative effort by West African and German partners, and the hosting of a next-generation Alexander von Humboldt Fellow.
Importantly, Yaping has been a founding member of ISAR and he has been active in the ISAR Board and in the Aeolian Research Editorial Board. He has also served as an associate or guest editor for, e.g., Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, Environmental Modeling and Software, Global and Planetary Change, etc. He has acted as a referee for various journals, including Nature, Geophysical Research Letters, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Boundary Layer Meteorology, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Geomorphology, Mathematical and Computer Modeling, etc., and for funding bodies in many countries (Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Israel, Netherlands, UK, USA) including for the most prestigious funding schemes, e.g. from the European Research Council.
According to the Web of Science, Yaping has published 180 publications and was cited 9,507 times (h index 48). Citations according to Google Scholar even amount to 16,000, leading to an h-index of 61. He is included in the list of the World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University/Elsevier. He has published the seminal book “Physics and Modeling of Wind Erosion” (Springer Netherlands). Besides long-standing and more recent publications in the field of aeolian research, he has also investigated Alzheimer’s disease and human movement in ancient Europe, demonstrating Yaping’s tremendous depth and breadth in knowledge, interest, and expertise.
