Dr. Shengjie Hu

My name is Shengjie Hu, and I received my Ph.D. degree in Environmental Science and Engineering from Zhejiang University, China, in July 2024. Currently, I am conducting postdoc research at the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, where I investigate the thermodynamic principle underlying critical phenomena in both man-made urban systems and natural lake systems.

I was trained over 10 years in the field of Geographical Information System and Remote Sensing technology. But, since starting my Ph.D., I have been fascinated by how power law distributions and critical phenomena are so common in both natural and social complex systems. My research focused on exploring the driving mechanisms behind the statistics of lake and urban systems, and their similarities using multi-source data along with multi-disciplinary theories and methods.

My research shows that similarities in both statistics and mechanisms emerge from these two complex systems. In general, the external force tends to drive the system away from power law to stretched-exponential and further to exponential distribution, accompanied by a decrease in system stability and resilience, as well as negative environmental impacts.

In the future, I would like to continue working on complex system dynamics, in particular to explore the commonalities in the dynamic mechanisms of different systems.