Source: School of Earth Science and Geological Engineering
Written by: Wang Shugong
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

The 17th annual conference of the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences (IAMG 2015) took place on September 5-13, 2015 in Freiberg, Germany. At this meeting, Prof. Yongzhang Zhou from the School of Earth Science and Geological Engineering of Sun Yat-sen University, China, was awarded the 2015 Felix Chayes Prize for his excellence in research in mathematical petrology. On the invitation of the IAMG 2015 organizer, Prof. Zhou also gave a keynote lecture to the plenary meeting with the topic of “Characterizing behavior of metallic elements in petrologic domain using mathematical modeling”, which closed the series of keynote talks of IAMG 2015.


Prof. Zhou’s outstanding contributions in research in mathematical petrology include: (1) introducing the new concept of migration sink, constructing the embedded sink mosaic model, showing hierarchical paths and resulted fractal patterns of impurity trace elemental migration in source strata and the developing mechanism of conjugate geochemical anomalies, which provides with vital basis in understanding basic metallogenetic mechanism such as reactivation and long distant migration of trace elements in source rocks as well as multi-level geochemical anomalies; (2) unveiling non-linear geochemical dynamic processes of elemental sedimentation at water/sediment interface based on multi-dimensional cross spectral analysis and Markov chain analysis of lithologic cyclicity; (3) quantitatively estimating element mobility in complex system of deformation, hydrothermal wall-rock alteration and mineralization by suitable methodology of determining mathematical invariants; (4) early warning and predicting the changes of eco-geochemical environments of aim areas using geomathematical and geochemical methods.

Prof. Zhou is at present full time professor at SYSU. He got his Ph.D from Université du Québec, Canada, in 1992. He is one of the pioneer Chinese scientists to publish research papers in the SCI journals sponsored by IAMG. He served IAMG, such as the Member of IAMG Nominations Commission (for 2008-2012 Councils, and for 2012-2016 Councils), Member of the IAMG Awards Committee (2007-2011), and the present Chair of the Topical Section of IAMG for Chinese Members. He is the founder and advisor of the IAMG Student Chapter at Sun Yat-sen University.