Prof. David Yuen visited HPSTAR

At the invitation of HPSTAR director,Ho-Kwang(Dave) Mao, Prof. David Yuen visited HPSTAR on June 13, 2016.Yuen is the director of the key laboratory of dynamic and geodesy(KLDG), and professor of the department of geology and geophysics and supercomputing center of University of Minnesota.

This is the first time that Prof. David Yuenvisited HPSTAR. David also has a lot of collaborations with some geochemistry institutes in China. Since 2012, he has beenspending 3 to 4 months each year at the School of Environmental Studies at 中国地质大学武汉 as a 长江 professor.

During his visit , David delivered a geophysical seminar entitled "The Impact of the IronSpin Transition on Mantle Convection”.

First, Prof. Yuen introduced some basic knowledge about geodynamics including mantle heterogeneities, phasetransition, layering in the mantle and the related causes.

He also talked about the different styles of mantle convection.

Finally, Prof. Yuen discussed the dynamical implications of spin transition in this lecture. “This spin transition offers an alternative to chemically stratified models”, he say. “This transition can explain stagnant slabs inthe mid mantle and also the role of super-plumes in mantle dynamics”.

We are waiting for Prof. Yuen’s next visit for more collaborations.

Prof. David Yuen graduated in 1969 from Caltech in chemistry. He then received a master in physical chemistry from UC Berkeley and a PHD in geophysics and geophysics in 1978 with a minor in applied mathematics from UCLA Following a two year NATO and NSF postdoctoral fellowships, he went to Arizona State University as assistant professor in geology. In 1985 he moved two times, first to Dept. of Geological Sciences at university of Colorado at Boulder in January as associate professor, then in September to University of Minnesota, as associate professor in geophysics and Fellow of Minnesota Supercomputer Institute. He works mainly in computational geodynamics with interests also spanning to visualization and now Big Data大数据. He has published around 550 papers and edited six books in geophysics and high-performance computing. His h-index is 61 according to Thomas-Reuters.