- Tao Shen
- Virginia Institute of Marine Science
I was born in a small town of China in the 1980s. Although my hometown is far from the ocean and sea, my parents named me Tao, which, in Chinese, means huge waves in the ocean. Maybe it is this name that started the relationship between the ocean and me. I have been very interested in natural science, especially the earth and marine science, since I was a child. I always asked my father all kinds of questions about our planet. My father, who is a bank clerk, was the first teacher of me and taught me a lot, but he could not answer all my questions, so he bought me a lot of books. I did read several interesting books about natural phenomenon, especially about the earth and the ocean when I was in primary school and middle school. After I graduated from high school, I got the opportunity to enter one of the top universities in China-Nanjing University.
I started my study of physical geography and oceanography in 2002 in Nanjing University. In the institute I met several excellent physical oceanographers and learned a lot from them. In 2005, I joined in the Ministry of Education’s Key Laboratory for Coast and Island development and did some research work about sediment transportation in lagoon in Hainan Province. During that time, the director of the laboratory, Dr. Shu Gao, introduced the numerical oceanographic model to us in his lectures, which interested me a lot. After I got my bachelor’s degree from Nanjing University, I decided to study physical oceanography and numerical model in VIMS.
In 2006, I entered VIMS and began pursuing my master degree. Now I am working with Dr. Harry Wang to develop the high resolution storm surge and inundation model for the Chesapeake Bay. I am also interested in the ocean observing system because we modelers need observation data to calibrate our model and verify accuracy of our results. I am very glad that I can join in the SeaCAMEL project to do some observation research.