Yao Tandong

Yao Tandong is a glacier environment and global change scientist, one of the pioneers of ice core research in China, an academician member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a researcher, doctoral supervisor and honorary director of the CAS Qinghai Tibet Plateau Research Institute .

In 1978, Yao graduated from the Department of Geology and Geography of Lanzhou University. In 1982, he stayed in the university to teach, and in 1986 he received a doctoral degree from the Lanzhou Institute of Glaciology and Permafrost of CAS.

Since 1987, he has entered the Université Grenoble Alpes in France and Ohio State University in the United States for post-doctoral research. In 1990, he joined the Lanzhou Institute of Glaciology and Permafrost of CAS, and in 1995, he won the first National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, the first Qinghai Tibet Plateau Youth Science and Technology Award and the Basic Theory Award for Glacier Permafrost. In 2001, he served as the director of the Institute of Environment and Engineering in Cold and Dry Areas of CAS. In 2003, he served as a researcher of the Qinghai Tibet Plateau Research Institute of CAS, and in 2007 he was elected as a CAS academician.

In 2009, he served as the co-chairman of Third Pole Environment and by 2014, he was the director of the Qinghai Tibet Plateau Geoscience Excellence and Innovation Center of CAS. In 2017, he won the Vega Medal Award issued by the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography, first Asian scientist winner of the award.

Yao is mainly engaged in research on glaciers and environmental change, and has developed the research of ice cores in China.