Overview
Chunmiao Zheng is a hydrogeologist and environmental engineer whose work has advanced contaminant-transport modeling, groundwater-surface water interactions, and sustainable water management. He is Chair Professor and Vice President at the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT), Ningbo, and Director of the Shenzhen Institute of Sustainable Development at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech). He previously served as the George Lindahl III Endowed Professor at the University of Alabama and as Founding Director of the Institute of Water Sciences at Peking University. A Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), he received the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (2024), the O.E. Meinzer Award (2013), and the M. King Hubbert Award (2013). He is the developer of the MT3D/MT3DMS solute-transport models, adopted in more than 100 countries, and the author or co-author of over 500 peer-reviewed papers and six books, with more than 36,000 citations on Google Scholar.
Education
1985-1988 Ph.D., Hydrogeology; minor in Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA.
1983-1984 Postgraduate Studies in Geology and Applied Mathematics, Chengdu University of Technology (formerly Chengdu College of Geology), China.
1979-1983 B.S., Geology, specializing in Hydrogeology, Chengdu University of Technology (formerly Chengdu College of Geology), China.
Employment History
2022-present Chair Professor and Vice President (Global Engagement & Engineering), Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, China.
2022-present Chair Professor and Director, Shenzhen Institute of Sustainable Development, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
2015-2022 Chair Professor and Vice Provost of Global Strategies (2018-22), Founding Dean of the School of Environmental Science and Engineering (2015-18), Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
2010-2018 Chair Professor and Founding Director, Institute of Water Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China (on joint appointment after 2015).
1993-2018 George Lindahl III Endowed Professor (2010-18; on leave after 2013), Professor (2002-2010), Associate Professor (1997-2002), Assistant Professor (1993-1997), Department of Geological Sciences, University of Alabama.
1988-1993 Senior Hydrogeologist, S.S. Papadopulos & Associates, Inc., Bethesda, Maryland.
Professional Experience
2018-present Lindahl Professor Emeritus and Adjunct Professor, Department of Geological Sciences, University of Alabama.
2006-2009 Visiting Professor and Founding Director, Center for Water Research, Peking University, Beijing, China.
2001 Visiting Fellow, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom.
2000 Visiting Associate Professor, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.
2000 Visiting Scientist, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California.
1995 Visiting Fellow, Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organization, Sydney.
1991 Assistant Professional Lecturer, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Awards and Honors
2024 Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (PSIPW) (Groundwater category); PSIPW is a leading, global scientific award focusing on cutting-edge innovation in water research (https://www.psipw.org)
2024 Highly Cited Researchers 2024, Clarivate (https://clarivate.com/highly-cited-researchers/)
2019 Fellow, American Geophysical Union (AGU) (https://eos.org/agu-news/2019-class-of-agu-fellows-announced)
2014 Distinguished Alumni Award, Department of Geoscience, University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI.
2013 O.E. Meinzer Award, Hydrogeology Division, Geological Society of America (https://www.geosociety.org/awards/13speeches/meinzer.htm)
2013 M. King Hubbert Award, National Ground Water Association.
(https://www.ngwa.org/members/awards/m-king-hubbert-award-recipients)
2012 Distinguished Lecturer for Hydrology Section, AOGS-AGU (WPGM) Joint Assembly, Singapore.
2009 Birdsall-Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer, Hydrogeology Division, Geological Society of America (https://community.geosociety.org/hydrodivision/aboutus/birdsall-lectures/past)
2008 DuPont Lecturer, University of Delaware, DE.
2005 Oliver Lectureship in Hydrogeology, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, TX.
1999 Fellow, Geological Society of America.
1998 John Hem Excellence in Science and Engineering Award, National Ground Water Association.
Primary Research Interests
Impacts of global change and emerging contaminants on groundwater sustainability
Integrated studies of hydrologic and ecological processes at watershed scales
Surface water-groundwater interactions and their ecological and environmental effects
Effects of physical and chemical heterogeneities on contaminant transport and remediation
Novel technologies for green environmental remediation and nature-based carbon sequestration
Professional Affiliations
American Geophysical Union (AGU, Fellow)
National Ground Water Association (NGWA)
Geological Society of America (GSA, Fellow)
International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS)
Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences (CSES, Fellow)
Teaching and Mentoring
Established and advanced hydrogeology and environmental science & engineering programs across four institutions in the United States and China: the University of Alabama, Peking University, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), and the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT), Ningbo.
Designed and delivered more than 10 distinct undergraduate and graduate courses in hydrogeology, groundwater flow and contaminant transport modeling, geostatistics, integrated hydrologic/environmental systems, water resources management, hydrogeological field techniques, and quantitative analysis.
Supervised and mentored over 120 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers (more than half of whom are women), many of whom have advanced to leadership roles in academia, government, and industry worldwide.
10 Representative Papers over the Past Five Years (*corresponding author)
Author or co-author of more than 500 peer-reviewed journal articles and six books:
Publication profiles (details available at):
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=g0FPeQsAAAAJ
Web of Science: https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/I-5257-2014
Scopus: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=59377651000
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5839-1305
1. Kuang, X., J. Liu*, B.R. Scanlon, J.J. Jiao, S. Jasechko, M. Lancia, B.K. Biskaborn, Y. Wada, H. Li, Z. Zeng, Z. Guo, Y. Yao, T. Gleeson, J.-P. Nicot, X. Luo, Y. Zou, C. Zheng*, 2024, The changing nature of groundwater in the global water cycle, Science, 383, eadf0630, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adf0630.
2. Yu, J., Y. Tian*, X. Wang, T. Sun, M. Lancia, C.B. Andrews, C. Zheng*, 2024, Integrated modeling of flow, soil erosion, and nutrient dynamics in a regional watershed: Assessing natural and human-induced impacts, Water Resour. Res., 60(9), https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR037531.
3. Pang, M., E. Du*, C. Zheng*, 2024, Contaminant transport modeling and source attribution with attention‐based graph neural network, Water Resour. Res., 60(6), e2023WR035278, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023WR035278.
4. Ma, R., K. Chen, C.B. Andrews, S.P. Loheide, A.H. Sawyer, X. Jiang, M.A. Briggs, P.G. Cook, S.M. Gorelick, H. Prommer, B.R. Scanlon, Z. Guo, C. Zheng*, 2024, Methods for quantifying interactions between groundwater and surface water, Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 49: 623-653, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-111522-104534.
5. Chen, K., X. Chen, J.C. Stegen, J.A. Villa, …, E.E. Roden*, C. Zheng*, 2023, Vertical hydrologic exchange flows control methane emissions from riverbed sediments, Environ. Sci. Technol., 57(9), 4014–4026, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c07676.
6. Dai, Y., S. Yang, D. Zhao, C. Hu, W. Xu, D.M. Anderson, Y. Li, X. Song, D.G. Boyce, L. Gibson, C. Zheng, L. Feng, 2023, Coastal phytoplankton blooms expand and intensify in the 21st century, Nature, 615 (7951), 280-284, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05760-y.
7. Lin, S., H. Zhang, C. Wang, X.-L. Su, Y. Song, P. Wu, Z. Yang, M.-H. Wong, Z. Cai*, and C. Zheng*, 2022, Metabolomics reveal nanoplastic-induced mitochondrial damage in human liver and lung cells, Environ. Sci. Technol., 56 (17), 12483-12493, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c03980.
8. Yin, M., R. Ma, Y. Zhang*, K. Chen, Z. Guo, C. Zheng*, 2022, A Dual heterogeneous domain model for upscaling anomalous transport with multi‐peaks in heterogeneous aquifers, Water Resour. Res., 58(4), e2021WR031128, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR031128.
9. Feng, Y., Z. Zeng*, T.D. Searchinger, A.D. Ziegler, …, C. Zheng*, 2022, Doubling of annual forest carbon loss over the tropics during the early twenty-first century, Nature Sustainability, 5, 444-451, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00854-3.
10. Yao, Y., C. Zheng*, C. B. Andrews, B. R. Scanlon, X. Kuang, Z. Zeng, S. Jeong, 2021, Role of groundwater in sustaining northern Himalayan rivers, Geophysical Research Letters, 48, e2020GL092354, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL092354.
Major Books and Computer Software
1. National Research Council (NRC), 2012, Challenges and Opportunities in the Hydrologic Sciences, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 188 pp. (Chunmiao Zheng was a member of the NRC committee that authored this consensus study report, available at https://doi.org/10.17226/13293).
2. Zheng, C. and G.D. Bennett, 2009, Applied Contaminant Transport Modeling, Chinese Edition, Higher Education Press, Beijing, China, in collaboration with John Wiley & Sons, New York, 417 pp.
3. Committee on Chinese Groundwater Science, 2009, Challenges and Opportunities in Chinese Groundwater Science, Science Press, Beijing, China, 200 pp. (Chunmiao Zheng was chair of the committee that authored this book report.)
4. Zheng, C., and G.D. Bennett, 2002, Applied Contaminant Transport Modeling, Second Edition, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 621 pp. (Available at the Wiley website).
5. Zheng, C., and G.D. Bennett, 1995, Applied Contaminant Transport Modeling: Theory and Practice, Van Nostrand Reinhold (now John Wiley & Sons), New York, 440 pp.
6. Zheng, C., and P.P. Wang, 1999, MT3DMS: A Modular 3-D Multi-species Transport Model for Simulation of Advection, Dispersion and Chemical Reactions of Contaminants in Groundwater Systems; Documentation and User’s Guide, Contract Report SERDP-99-1, U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, MS, 169 pp. (Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20170129200934/http://hydro.geo.ua.edu/mt3d/).
7. Zheng, C., 1990, MT3D: A Modular 3-D Transport Model for Simulation of Advection, Dispersion and Chemical Reactions of Contaminants in Groundwater Systems, Report to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, 170 pp.
Major Committees and Editorial Boards
2025-present Board of Directors, The Groundwater Project, Ontario, Canada
2024-present Steering Group, GEWEX Groundwater Network, International GEWEX Project Office, Fairfax, Virginia
2023-2025 Hydrology Section Fellows Committee, Hydrology Section, American Geophysical Union (AGU)
2021-present Founding Editor-in-Chief, Sustainable Horizons, an international open-access journal in partnership with Elsevier
2019-present Advisory Panel, Section on Environmental Earth Science, National Natural Science Foundation of China
2016-present Associate Editor, Vadose Zone Journal
2015-present Associate Chair, Steering Committee, Major Research Program “Runoff Change in the Headwater Region of China’s Southwestern Rivers and Their Adaptive Management”, National Natural Science Foundation of China
2013-2018 Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Acta Geologica Sinica (English Edition)
2010-2018 Member, Steering Committee, Major Research Program “An Integrated Study of Ecohydrological Processes in the Heihe River Basin”, National Natural Science Foundation of China
2010-2015 Associate Editor, Water Resources Research
2009-2013 Blue Ribbon Panel on “Challenges and Opportunities in the Hydrologic Sciences”, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.
2007-2014 Associate Editor, Journal of Hydrology
2007-2013 President-elect and President, International Commission on Groundwater, International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS)
2005-2015 Standing Committee on Hydrologic Science, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.
2005-2007 Treasurer, Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI), Washington, D.C.
2004-2008 Science and Technology Center Site Review Team, National Science Foundation, United States
2003-2007 Associate Editor, Hydrogeology Journal, International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) and Geological Society of America (GSA)
1998-2010 Associate Editor and Software Column Editor (2002-2010), Ground Water (now Groundwater), National Ground Water Association