Xiumian Hu is a professor of sedimentology in Nanjing University. He received the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2015 by the National Natural Science Foundation in China. Xiumian Hu graduated from Chengdu University of Technology, China (BSc in 1996, MSc in 1999 and Ph. D in 2002), followed by 2002-2003 postdoc research at Universita' Politecnica delle Marche, Italy. Dr. Hu joined in the Nanjing University and established a Tethyan Sedimentological Group since then. During October 2010 to August 2011, he was a visiting professor at the School of GeoSciences, The University of Edinburgh, UK. Up to now, more than 16 Ph. D students and 12 MSc students graduated from the group under Prof. Hu’s supervision.

Prof. Hu’s main field working areas include the Himalaya-Tibetan Plateau, the western Alps, the Apennines, the Zargos-Turkish mountains. His main interest lies in understanding the geological evolution in the Tethyan Ocean and Mesozoic-Cenozoic palaeoclimatic and palaeoceanographic changes. Currently, he is the leader of the UNESCO/IUGS International Geosciences Program (IGCP) 739 “Mesozoic-Palaeogene hyperthermal events” and the co-leader of the International Sedimentological Group of the IUGS Big Science Program “Deep-Time Digital Earth (DDE)”. He services now as the council member of the International Association of Sedimentologists (IAS), as a Global Ambassador of the SEPM (Society of Sedimentary Geology), and the Secretary General of the Chinese Association of Sedimentologists (CAS), as the associated editor/editorial member for the journals including Sedimentology, Science China Earth Sciences, Journal of Earth Sciences. He has published over 200 journal papers and chapters in books, with a total citation of over 6000 times and an h-index of 41 and is one of the most highly cited authors in geosciences by Elsevier since 2022.