Xiaodong Yang, who is now in his third year as a CDT student, has secured a position as a visiting researcher at the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, USA.

Xiaodong is usually based at the University of Southampton, where his research focuses upon the factors differentiating deepwater fold belts on passive margins as compared to orogenic belts.

While at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Xiaodong’s research will concentrate upon numerical modelling of compressional & contractional tectonic deformation, with a particular emphasis on the dynamic growth of fold-thrust belts as driven by plate convergence. This will be in collaboration with a project carried out by Dr Mark Behn, who will consider the difference between deepwater fold-thrust belts situated on passive margins as driven by gravity instabilities (e.g. NW Borneo) and fold-thrust belts and submarine accretionary wedges created as a consequence of plate convergence (e.g. Makran).

Xiaodong’s research will combine the use of seismic interpretation of 2D and 3D data, finite element modelling, strain analysis, structural reconstruction and field work in order to better understand the complexities of fold-thrust belts.