Visiting Scholar Report: Dr Hongjie Xie
Dr Hongjie Xie is a researcher at the University of Texas San Antonio. His Visiting Scholarship was hosted by the Universidad de Concepción (Chile), supported by Professor Alfonso Fernandez.
The SCAR Visiting Scholar scheme supported two visits to Universidad de Concepción in March 2022 and January 2023 to support the Antarctic research programme, with a focus on remote sensing of sea ice, ice sheet, and ice shelf, and Antarctica’s contribution to global sea level rise.
Dr Xie giving a research seminar in the Department of Geography at the
Universidad de Concepción, March 2022
Dr Xie undertook two visits to Chile as part of his Scholarship:
- Visit in March 2022 focused on glaciological fieldwork. This visit was disrupted by COVID-19 but interactions with faculty and students were still possible, including a hybrid seminar presented to the Department of Geography
- Visit in January 2023 focused on capacity building of the Antarctic research programme. This visit included Dr Xie giving a two day workshop on ICESat/ICESat2, and participating in a glaciological fieldtrip.
Visit Highlights
Dr Xie was able to meet with students and faculty in the Department of geography, give a hybrid research seminar and a two-day workshop, and begin conversations about an exchange programme between the two universities – UTSA’s MS Geoinformatics and UdeC’s MS Geography Analysis. Dr Xie also collaborated on initiating a forthcoming special issue of Remote Sensing of Environment on “Remote Sensing of the Cryosphere”.
Dr Xie accompanied a fieldtrip with faculty and students during one of his visits to UdeC
Dr Xie concluded that:
“This SCAR scholarship has significantly strengthened my collaboration relationship with Dr. Alfonso Fernandez in UdeC … I believe it was a very successful outreach to the hosting university”
He aims to continue his collaboration with Universidad de Concepción, including continuing work on an exchange program between the two universities. Dr Xie plans to visit UdeC regularly in the future.
The full report is through the SCAR Library and on the SCAR Visiting Scholars webpage together with the full list of previous SCAR Fellows and available reports.
The SCAR Visiting Scholar Programme is designed to build capacity in countries with smaller or less-developed Antarctic research programmes. The scheme was inaugurated in 2013 and is directed at researchers, more than five years after their PhDs, whose work contributes to the research objectives of SCAR, offering an opportunity to undertake a short-term visit to another SCAR member country.