Climate Mathematician

Sam Shen is Visiting Research Mathematician at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, and Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at San Diego State University. He received his B.Sc. in Engineering Mechanics in 1982 from the Nanjing University of Science and Technology, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985 and 1987, respectively. Formerly, Dr. Shen was McCalla Professor of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at the University of Alberta, Canada, and President of the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society. He also held a variety of visiting positions at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, US Climate Prediction Center, and University of Tokyo.

His main research areas are global climate change and nonlinear waves. He has published 3 books and more than 100 research papers in top journals, including Nature-Geoscience. He developed the spectral optimal averaging theory and several other mathematical methods to quantify the uncertainties in the global warming assessment. He is the lead developer of the Weather History Time Machine, a software package that uses his spectral optimal gridding method to display historical climate data around the world. In addition to scientific journals, many news media also reported his research, including Science Daily, National Science Foundation News, New York Times, New Scientist, NASA Top Story, and KUSI News TV. Dr. Shen was awarded the US National Research Council’s Senior Fellowship and the honor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Well-known Overseas Chinese Scholar.