Fall, 2024
Principal Investigator
Dr. Chaoqun (Crystal) Lu
Chaoqun is an associate professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, & Organismal Biology at ISU. She is a quantitative ecosystem ecologist, with a research focus on understanding and quantifying the complex ecosystem processes in response to climate change, land use and cover change, and human management across scales. Her primary area of interest includes estimation of terrestrial carbon sequestration, land-to-atmosphere greenhouse gas emissions, and land-to-aquatic nutrient movements by using process-based land surface models, and data-driven AI-empowered prediction tools.
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Postdoctoral Research Associate
Bo Yi
(boyi[at]iastate.edu)
Bo got his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at ISU and Master's degree in soil science from Zhejiang University, China. His projects integrate a large volume of lab incubation and field measurement data from NEON soil samples and long-term experimental sites to enhance our prediction capability in SOC dynamics and reduce modeling uncertainties. His work involves AI-based data mining, mechanistic SOC modeling and ecosystem modeling with isotope features.
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Hai Huang
(haihuang[at]iastate.edu)
Hai is a Postdoctoral Researcher at ISU. He earned his Ph.D. in Land Use and Information Technology from China Agricultural University. His research focuses on assessing and projecting agriculture-related land processes, integrating Earth observation data and machine learning into the process-based modeling frameworks.
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Weihang Liu
(whliu[at]iastate.edu)
Weihang is a Postdoctoral Researcher at ISU. He earned his Doctorate in Natural Disaster from Beijing Normal University, China. His research focuses on the impact of climate change on agroecosystems, particularly on the climate resilience of crop production, using a combination of process-based modeling and machine learning approaches.
PhD student, Environmental Sciences
Shuchao Ye
(ysc[at]iastate.edu)
Shuchao is a Ph.D. student in the program of Environmental Science at ISU. He received his Master’s degree in surveying and mapping from Central South University, China. His research interests include quantifying the impacts of land use and cover change, such as cropland expansion and CRP land enrollment, on the terrestrial carbon cycling and predicting the carbon sequestration potentials under conservation practices.
PhD student, Environmental Sciences
Xiaoqiong Chen
(xqchen[at]iastate.edu)
Xiaoqiong is a Ph.D. student in the Environmental Science program at ISU. She pursued her Master's degree in natural disasters at Beijing Normal University, China. Her research focuses on eco-hydrological processes in agriculture-dominated watersheds, data analytics and model-based flood risk assessment.
Undergraduate Researcher
Fernanda Guerra Torres
(fguerra[at]iastate.edu)
Ferny is a senior at ISU majoring in Biology with a minor in Chinese Studies. She is graduating in May 2025. She currently works as an undergraduate research assistant in our lab, assisting with nutrient budget assessment. She plans to pursue Biology in graduate school.
Lab Alumni
Linchao Li, Postdoctoral Researcher (2023-2024), now an associate professor at the Inner Mongolian Agricultural University
Qinsi He, visiting Ph.D. Student (2023-2024), now an associate professor at the Inner Mongolian Agricultural University
Yan Zhang, visiting Ph.D. Student (2021-2023), now a researcher in China
Ignacio Calderon, MS Student (2022-2024), now an environmental reporter for The Coloradoan
Peiyu Cao, Ph.D. Student and Postdoctoral researcher (2016-2023), now a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University
Jien Zhang, Postdoctoral researcher (2018-2022), now a quantitative associate at J.P. Morgan
Zhen Yu, Postdoctoral researcher (2016-2019), now a professor at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, China
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Alina Lu, Undergraduate Researcher (2017-2018), now a DMD student at Penn Dental Medicine
Avani Khadilkar, Graduate student (2017-2020), now a Bioinformatics Systems Analyst in the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute
Geunhu Kim, Graduate student (2019-2020), now in South Korea
