Minhan Dai is a chair professor of marine environmental science at Xiamen University, where he served as the Director of State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science between 2005-2021. His primary research interests include ocean carbon/nutrients biogeochemistry and their coupling with ocean dynamics in the broad context of climatic and environmental changes. He is also well known for his work on marine radiochemistry. Recently, his research scope has expanded to the interface between science and policy. He has published >250 peer-reviewed papers in leading international journals. He was elected an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2017 and won the 2022 Axford Medal Award (by Asia-Oceania Geosciences Society, AOGS in recognition of excellence in geosciences). He was elected AGU Fellow and won AGU Ambassador Award in 2024.
He is a member of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) Expert Group of the Global Ocean Oxygen Network (GO2NE), a member of the expert group of the High-level panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, and a council member of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED). He was co-chair of the international program: Surface Ocean and Low Atmosphere Study (SOLAS) during 2021-2023. He is a leading PI of “Coastal Zones Under Intensifying Human Activities and Changing Climate: A Regional Programme Integrating Science, Management and Society to Support Ocean Sustainability (COASTAL-SOS)”, which was endorsed by the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development Program (2021-2030) as a project.
