Ming Xiao

DepartmentOrganizationEmailPhoneAddressUniversity Park , Pennsylvania 16802United StatesBioDr. Ming Xiao is an Associate Professor and Director of the Civil Infrastructure Testing and Evaluation Laboratory (CITEL) in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on design and performances of civil infrastructure (such as roads, bridges, foundations, and dams) from investigating fundamental mechanisms to full-scale performances using experimental, numerical, and analytical methods. He has led collaborative and cross-disciplinary research projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Department of Interior, and state Departments of Transportation to address infrastructure systems’ challenges. He has published two books and 120 journal and conference publications and technical reports. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He was the Chair of the ASCE Geo-Institute’s Technical Committee on Geotechnics of Soil Erosion from 2011 to 2017. He was co-Chair of the 4th GeoShanghai International Conference in May 2018 in Shanghai, China and is currently Chair of the 10th International Conference on Scour and Erosion (ICSE-10) in 2021. He is an Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering and an editorial board member (EBM) of the Canadian Geotechnical Journal.

Interests

Permafrost, Engineering, Interdisciplinary Research, Indigenous Knowledge

Science Specialties

Performances of civil infrastructure and permafrost coastal erosion due to permafrost degradation in the Arctic and their sociodemographic impacts.

Current Research

1. PI of NSF grant “SitS: Collaborative Research: Understand and forecast long-term variations of in-situ geophysical and geomechanical characteristics of degrading permafrost in the Arctic” funded by NSF Signals in the Soils (SitS) program, 01/01/2021 to 12/31/2023, total funding $1,200,000. Project PI, with collaboration of University of Alaska Fairbanks, Virginia Tech.
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2034363&HistoricalAwards=false
2. PI of NSF grant “NNA Track 1: Collaborative Research: Resilience and adaptation to the effects of permafrost degradation induced coastal erosion” Funded by NSF Navigating the New Arctic program, 09/01/2019 to 08/31/2024, total funding $3,000,000. Project lead PI, with collaboration of University Alaska Fairbanks, University of Idaho, Missouri Science and Technology University.
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1927718&HistoricalAwards=false
3. Co-PI of NSF grant “Collaborative Research: AccelNet: Permafrost Coastal Systems Network (PerCS-Net) – a circumpolar alliance for arctic coastal community information exchange.” Funded by NSF Accelerating Research through International Network-to-Network Collaborations (AccelNet), 10/01/2019 to 09/30/2023, total funding $1,800,000. Lead PI: Benjamin Jones. Co-PI: Craig Tweedie.
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1927553&HistoricalAwards=false
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1927137&HistoricalAwards=false
4. PI of NSF grant “Convergence NNA: Coordinate a Transdisciplinary Research Network to Identify Challenges of and Solutions to Permafrost Coastal Erosion and Its Socioecological Impacts in the Arctic.” Funded by NSF Arctic System Science program, 01/01/2018 to 12/31/2021, total funding $500,000. Co-PIs: Vladimir Romanovsky, Kathleen Halvorsen, Guangqing Chi, Benjamin Jones.
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1745369
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_images.jsp?cntn_id=242889&org=NSF