Dr ZHOU Yunxuan has been professor of physical geography at State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research since 2002.

Before joining ECNU, Prof Zhou was Dean of College of Geo-Exploration Science and Technology, Jilin University, and Research Professor at Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He joined ECNU late 2002 as professor of physical geography at State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research. He served as Director of the State Key Laboratory from 2011-2015, and Director of International Cooperation & Exchange Division of ECNU from 2016-2021.

Prof Zhou’s research covers a number of fields, including applied geophysics for mineral and petroleum exploration, application of remote sensing in land cover and land use change, coastal water color retrieval and coastal wetland monitoring. He earned several honors from Ministry of Education and Shanghai Municipal Government for his research achievements. So far he has supervised over 70 graduate students, half  of which are Ph.D. students.

Prof Zhou received an Engineering Bachelor Degree from Changchun College of Geology in China, M.Sc. from International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences (ITC) and Ph.D. from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. He worked as post-doc researcher at ITC and Delft University from 1993-1994.