Ambassadors of the YES Network

Nominate someone you know (including yourself!) as a YES Ambassador! Send us your stories and photos about how this person has promoted the YES Network in local communities or on a regional/global scale. Send your stories and photos to our Communications Support Team.

Ambassadors of the YES Network

Wang Meng
Beijing, China

Interview by Sarah Gaines.

SG: What got you interested in the Earth Sciences?

WM: I always have respected the magic of our nature, our earth, our human being, and every society with different cultures. Earth science is the basic way to let me know our world in the truest way. I want to know it with the scientific perspective.

SG: What are you studying?

WM: I am working on a Masters at the China University of Geosciences (Beijing) with a focus in Sedimentary Mineral and Basin Analysis. My research area is in the northeastern China where we have found a lot of early bird and dinosaur fossils with feathers that lived during the Early Cretaceous. I am working on the paleoenvironment in which they lived. This area is the location of one of the big oil fields in China, and it will be very interesting and important for us to know what its geological background is. The process of evolution may be able to offer information on the changing paleoclimate. It is useful information for us to understand the earth today.

SG: How is this relevant to society?

WM: Research on sedimentary mineral and basin analysis will offer the minerals and energy to our society and support its development to the future. We can use it to understand the paleoclimate that is the basis of our study of the climate of today.

SG: What has your involvement in YES been?

WM: I am the Vice President [of Operations] of YES Network now, and in the same time I papered the First World Young Earth-Scientists Congress 2009 in China as the leader of the Papering Committee of China for YES. The Papering Committee of China was the main part of the Chinese Organizing Committee that did all of the detail work for YES congress in China. After the Congress, I have been working to set up the National Committee of YES in China now. We meet a lot of difficulty, but we always be a team full of confidence and work hard together to make the dream comes true.

SG: What was your favorite part about the First World Congress of the YES Network in Beijing?

WM: I liked all parts of the Congress that comes from all of our hard work. If I need to select one thing, I think it is the virtual meeting that can offer a new way for young scientists to communicate across national boundaries. I think it will be used more and more widely all over the world especially in developing countries.

SG: What’s your favorite rock and why?

WM: I love sedimentary rocks with fossils. It is the story of our earth that is waiting for us to find them and to understand. Jadeite is the stone I like too, because it is full of the culture of China. We usually compare it to the good national character of a man in China.