Shaocai Yu - Biography#

Prof. Shaocai Yu was honored as Chair Professor at Zhejiang University in 2014 and director of Lab for Sources and Causes of Atmospheric Pollution. He is a visiting professor (visitingAssociate faculty) at California Institute of Technology and adjunct professor at NC State University. Trained as a Chemist and meteorologist, Dr.Yu received a B.S. degree in 1985 and M.S. degree in 1988 from Peking University, and a Ph.D. degree in atmospheric sciences in 1999 from NC State University (USA). During the last three decades, Prof. Yu’s research interests mainly include two-way coupling WRF-CMAQ model for air pollution and aerosol-cloud-climate interactions.

Prof. Yu has 280 Publications (more than 100 refereed journal papers) with the highly impacted journals such as Nature, Science, PNAS, One Earth (Cell sister journal), New England of Medicine, BAMS, E.S.&T, ACP etc. In the three world’s leading multidisciplinary science journals (Science, Nature, PNAS), Prof. Yu published one paper in Science, one paper in Nature and three papers in PNAS as a corresponding author. The main academic contributions include: (1) find that the aerosols induce a significant increase of cloud water content and cloud area coverage, and have a much greater cooling effect than previously believed; (2) propose a new air pollution-control geoengineering measure by spraying water mist into the air to scavenge air pollutants. More than 1000 world media websites reported the methods and results of the work; (3) find that switching to electric vehicles can lead to significant reductions of PM2.5 and NO2 across China; (4) develop a precision air pollution control approach to mitigate severe urban haze pollution; (5) find that regional transport of PM2.5 is a major cause of severe haze in Beijing.

Prof. Yu served as member of AMS Atmospheric Chemistry Committee. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, associate editor of the journal Environmental Chemistry Letters, editorial board member of the journal Scientific Report and several other international journals. He has advised 9 PhD students, 16 MS students and 2 post-doctoral researchers. He is PIs of more than 10 projects founded by National Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Ministry of Science and Technology etc.