Songqiao (Shawn) Wei

Endowed Professors College of Natural Science

• Endowed Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences

• Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences

Bio

Songqiao “Shawn” Wei, assistant professor of seismology and geophysics in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, has wide-ranging interests in Earth's mantle structures, particularly those associated with subduction zones. Wei’s research uses various seismic and geophysical techniques to study subduction zones and melt/volatiles in Earth’s mantle. His recent work focuses on imaging seismic structures of the Tonga-Lau subduction system, intermediate-depth and deep seismicity in Tonga, seismic attenuation, and the mantle transition zone.

Wei received a BS in geology and an MS in geophysics from Peking University, and an MA and PhD in geophysics from Washington University in St. Louis in 2012 and 2016, respectively. Wei was a Scripps Institution of Oceanography postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego from 2016-2017 before joining the MSU faculty in January of 2018.

Wei’s scholarship and field research has been recognized throughout his career, including being named a Green Scholar at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, receiving the Antarctica Service Medal from the National Science Foundation in 2012 and being named a McDonnell Scholar at Washington University in St. Louis from 2010-2015. Wei has been an invited speaker at several conferences, including the Asian Oceania Geosciences Society’s Annual Meeting in 2018 and the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., in 2015.