On September 14th, two experts of XTBG, the visiting professor Robert Andrew Spicer who comes from Open University of the UK and the researcher Zhekun came to the college of life science in Sichuan Agriculture University to carry out academic exchanges. They made an academic report entitled “How plant fossils are transforming our understanding of the evolution of Tibet, monsoons and biodiversity in southern Asia” for teachers and students of the college of life science. Vice President Xu Huailiang hosted the meeting.
In the conference, researcher Robert and Zhou introduced the background of global climate change to students based on how to apply paleophytology to reconstruct paleoclimate. Moreover, they talked vivid about how people can predict changes in the environment based on the characteristics of the leaves of plants by taking the example of every part of a racing car is the key to winning or losing a race. At the end of the meeting, they shared their team’s difficult and interesting experience when they went all over the world for data collection.
It is reported that this academic exchange conference is the activity section of "Meeting Experts and Professors to Share Biological Secrets" of college life science festival which is in order to broaden the vision of college students, increase knowledge, and build a platform for their professional interest training by holding academic exchange conferences.
Experts Introduction
Robert Andrew Spicer：a professor of Open University of the UK, doctoral supervisor; an Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences in the Department of Environment, Earth and Ecosystems and a visiting scholar at the XTBG.; Vice president of International Organization of Palaeobotany. He mainly engages in researches of geology and paleobotany, proposes and develops a method of multivariate analysis of climatic leaf facies, and probes into the origin and evolution history of Asian monsoon, the evolution of biodiversity in southeast Asia and the uplift process of the Himalaya and Tibet through fossil flora. Relevant research results have been published in Nature, Science, National Science Review, Geology and other important academic journals.
Zhou Zhekun: A Ph.D., researcher, doctoral supervisor, received the doctor's degree jointly cultivated by the Chinese academy of sciences and the Royal Botanic Gardenvice in 1990; Vice president of Paleontology Society of PSC, editor of Plant Diversity. He mainly engages in the research of modern botany and paleontology, and carries out deep researches on the distribution of angiosperm, the evolution of some important groups, and so on, which outputs published more than 200 articles in Science, Geology, National Science Review and other domestic and foreign academic journals.
