The Geological Society of America (GSA) honored its newly elected Fellows at a ceremony in Denver, Colorado on October 11. Among them was Prof. WANG Lu of CUG, who received one of the geoscience community’s most prestigious distinctions. Of the 19 scholars named Fellows this year — hailing from five countries — only five are based outside the United States, and just two are from China.
Prof. WANG Lu (left) and GSA President Glenn Thackray at the new Fellows induction ceremony in Denver, USA, October 11, 2026
Founded in 1888, GSA is one of the oldest and most influential international organizations in the Earth sciences. The candidates must be nominated by current Fellows, survive multiple rounds of rigorous review, and win election by the Society’s Council. The title is reserved for scholars who have made sustained and outstanding contributions both to research and to the scientific community itself.
Prof. WANG is a doctoral supervisor at CUG’s State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources and Deputy Director of its Global Tectonics Center. Since 2026, she has served as Editor-in-Chief of GSA Bulletin, as one of the very few Chinese scholars ever to lead an editorial board at a top international Earth science journal. She also sits on the editorial boards of several Chinese and international journals and on committees of both the Geological Society of China and GSA itself.
For years, Prof. WANG has pursued one of the biggest questions in Earth science: how does plate tectonics drive the growth and remaking of continental crust? Her strategy is to compare the ancient with the modern. Her team discovered and mapped, for the first time, a linear orogenic belt stretching 1,800 kilometers across the North China Craton — critical evidence that plate tectonics in its modern form was already operating in the late Archean, more than 2.5 billion years ago. The finding has made North China one of the key testing grounds for answering when and how plate tectonics began on Earth.
To date, Prof. WANG has published 118 papers indexed by SCI, 17 of which in the past five years, as first or corresponding author in leading journals such as Nature Communications, PNAS, Geology, EPSL, and JGR-Solid Earth. Her work has been cited more than 5,500 times, giving her an h-index of 41.
The election recognizes WANG Lu’s distinction on original research, scholarly influence, and service to the international scientific community. Looking ahead, she said she would continue working at the frontiers of Earth science, pursuing high-quality original research, fostering academic exchange both at home and abroad, and training the next generation of young scientists.
(Edited and translated from the Chinese version)
