Shujie Wang

Shujie Wang’s research is centered on the intersection of cryospheric science, remote sensing, numerical modeling, and machine learning. She is broadly interested in understanding and studying the past, present, and future cryospheric changes and processes, and their interactions with atmosphere, ocean, biosphere, and human systems. Her current research has focused on ice sheet processes that are not well understood and parameterized, representing large uncertainties in modeling the coupled ice-ocean-atmosphere system and projecting future sea-level rise. Specifically, Dr Wang is currently studying 1) Antarctic ice shelf dynamics, fractures, and controls on ice shelf instability using satellite optical, microwave, and altimetry data, ice flow models, climate models and reanalysis data; and 2) the spatiotemporal dynamics of glacier algae over the Greenland Ice Sheet to quantify their role in ice surface changes.

She is particularly intrigued by the possibility of developing novel approaches to solve research questions in different fields from interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives. For instance, using ocean color remote sensing to study algal blooms on the ice surface, and developing algorithms to extract ice sheet fractures and drumlin geomorphological features from altimetric measurements (e.g., ICESat, ICESat-2, airborne LiDAR). In the context of big data, both observational and modeling data available for studying earth system dynamics are increasing in their spatial and temporal coverage. She is interested in ‘intelligently’ coupling different observations and models using emerging advanced data-driven methods in machine learning and artificial intelligence to address questions pertaining to land-water-climate-biological systems.

Dr Wang’s work is funded through grants from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), United States Department of Agriculture, and Penn State seed programs (e.g., ICDS).

Before joining Penn State, she was a postdoctoral research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. degree in Geography from the University of Cincinnati, and Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Geographic Information Science from Sun Yat-Sen University.