Congratulations, Junyang!
On 09 July, Junyang Gou successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis entitled "Enhancing Geodetic Monitoring of Earth Surface Mass Variations using Deep Learning".
Junyang joined the Space Geodesy group for his doctoral study in 2022 after completing his master's study at ETH Zurich. His doctoral research was supervised by Prof. Benedikt Soja and Prof. Nico Sneeuw (University of Stuttgart) and included various collaborations with colleagues all around the world. Junyang was the first member of the group who focused on satellite gravimetry. His outstanding contributions over the past years built the foundation for the group's gravimetry research line, now a main pillar of the space geodesy group. His collaborative spirit and high-quality scientific output brought well-deserved recognition, highlighted by the prestigious Swiss NC IUGG Early Career Award.
Junyang's doctoral study started with improving the spatial resolution of global terrestrial water storage products from GRACE(-FO) satellite observations and later expanded to other domains, including the ocean and cryosphere. In the end, a global dataset of high-resolution monthly mass variations of the Earth was produced and delivered to the public openly. Furthermore, Junyang investigated downstream applications enabled by these high-resolution products, such as quantifying the mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet's ablation zone. On the other hand, he contributed to refining deep learning algorithms to suit the specific requirements of geoscience, including more realistic uncertainty quantification.
During Junyang's doctoral study, he visited the Department of Earth, Atmosphere, and Planetary Sciences at MIT for four and a half months under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Abigail Bodner. At MIT, he stepped out of his comfort zone and dedicated himself to monitoring mesoscale to submesoscale ocean dynamics by generating high-resolution sea surface height variations from SWOT satellite observations using physics-informed neural networks. This experience broadens Junyang's scientific insights and allows him to expand his research interests from a purely geodetic background to the intersection of geodesy, geophysics, and Earth system science.
After the official defense, there was a nice apéro with colleagues, friends, and family members to celebrate Junyang's career milestone.
