Zhixiang
Lu
Assistant research fellow
Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences
PhD study
From September 2012 to July 2015, I pursued my doctorate degree at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and obtained my PhD degree in July 2015. My research topic was in the areas of socio-hydrology, in particular, the evolution of the human-water relationship in the basin scale in the past 2000 years. During my PhD, I had conducted academic exchange for seven months (Nov. 2013-June. 2014) as a visiting scholar of University of Melbourne, under the supervision of A/Prof. Yongping Wei (catchment management, University of Melbourne & Australia-China Centre on River Basin Management) and Prof. Andrew Western (catchment and waterway research, University of Melbourne), which was also the beginning of a long term cooperation until now. My research during this period resulted in 7 journal papers and 2 conference paper. I also participated in the translation of the three books about the SWAT (Soil and Water Assessing Tool) hydrological model.
Current position and early research career
Since July 2015, I joined the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, where I worked as a Research Fellow in hydrology and water resources, I had been awarded ¥1.04M research funding including Youth Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Sole CI), the West Light Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Sole CI), and the Horizontal Subject from the State Power Investment Group Corporation (Second CI, project coordinator). In this role, I spend approximately 0.9FTE on research and 0.1FTE on co-supervising students and other serves including assisting in organizing meetings. I have co-supervised 3 PhD students and 3 Master students on various topics, including environmental carrying capacity, ecological environment evolution, basin management evaluation and hydrological model comparison. During this period, I published 25 journal papers and contributed 6 scholarly book chapters.
From August 2017 to July 2019, I rejoined my former PhD co-supervisor Yongping Wei at the University of Queensland supported by the International Postdoctoral Exchange Fellowship Program (Sole CI). I am now a postdoctor focused on the socio-hydrology and system relicenses supervised by Yongping Wei. In this role, I spend approximately 0.9FTE on research and 0.1FTE on co-supervising 5 Master students’ research course. During this period, I also served as the instructor of hydrology in arid areas for the Doctor in the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese academy of sciences (6 hours in all). During this period, I published 4 journal papers.
In addition, thanks to the major Research Plan ‘‘Integration of Eco-hydrological Process Research in Heihe River Basin” found by the National natural science foundation of China (2011-2018, ¥0.19 billion), I co-organized the academic annual conference in the past eight year and the panel discussions at the middle of the project. This is a valuable experience for me, by which I have a deep understanding of the establishment and management of Basin Research Plan, and I am also very familiar with the progress of basin research, which helped me to apply the accumulated knowledge to the Murray-Darling River Basin. More fortunately, I participated in two key projects and two integration projects in the Plan, and I have established key collaborations with Prof. Dawen Yang’s Eco-hydrological team (Tsinghua University), Prof. Chunmiao Zheng’s Water Resources and Environment team (South University of Science and Technology of China), Prof. Andrew Western’s catchment and waterway research team and Langford, J.’s Irrigation Management team (University of Melbourne), Prof. Ray Ison’s Systemic and Adaptive Governance team (The Open University) and A/Prof. Yongping Wei’s Catchment Governance System Science term (The University of Queensland). In addition, I have a good exchange and communication in the academic meetings with many experts in the fields of social-ecological system, hydrology and socio-hydrology, such as Prof. David Yu (Purdue University), Prof. Giuliano Di Baldassarre (Uppsala University) and Prof. Murugesu Sivapalan (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign).