Yancheng Zhang

I spent last six months (from January-June 2014) within Prof. C. M. Chiessi’s group at the University of São Paulo (USP) for my external stay, which benefited me greatly to both my scientific knowledge and academic experience.

First, during my stay I was offered a precious chance to participate in the fieldwork scheduled by Prof. A. O. Sawakuchi and Prof. P. C. F. Giannini at the Department of Geoscience (IGc), USP. Through the intensive collaboration with Brazilian colleagues, a set of modern sediments were collected in the Parnaíba River, i.e., the suspended and bedload material. The facilities at laboratories USP also accommodated me to analyze the Sr-Nd radiogenic isotopic compositions for the clarification of terrigenous provenance, a primary objective of my PhD project. Besides, discussions with other experts there (e.g., Prof. F. W. Cruz Junior, Prof. M. H. B. M. Holanda) were constructive not only to interpret the data for my manuscript but also to broaden my horizons in the open domains of related topics (i.e., speleothem and mineral geochemistry).

Second, introduced by Prof. C. M. Chiessi I also took the graduate course ‘climate in the past and future’ at the IGc-USP, during which I got lots of fun (since the course was given mainly in Portuguese) and contacted many Master and PhD students who work with different archives or materials in paleo-climatic science. The research group led by Prof. C. M. Chiessi also organized the internal meeting every two weeks, which allowed me to communicate with other colleagues (i.e., Prof. M. Gurgel and Dr. A. Perretti) in numerous topics of marine geoscience. Monthly seminar at the IGc-USP, Café Geológico e Encontros Quaternários, was another forum to know and establish contact with professors and young scientists (PhD and postdoc) from different research communities (i.e., Institute of Oceanography USP).

Third, supported by Prof. C. M. Chiessi I attended the 9th South American Symposium on Isotope Geology (SSAGI) conference from 6th-9th April at USP. During this conference I presented a poster titled by ‘Hydrological response of Northeastern Brazil during the last deglaciation’, which attracted the attention from lots of international scientists. The communication with them also helped me a lot to better understand the scientific question in my topic. Afterward, Prof. A. O. Sawakuchi and PhD student L. M. A. L. Ribeiro (CPRM) arranged a short but awesome fieldtrip for Prof. E. Rhodes (University of California, USA) and me to visit the cave sediment and sandy dune in southern Brazil which further strengthened my view in the coupled relationship between terrestrial and marine paleo-climatic records.

Last, I sincerely appreciate the financial support of GLOMAR for my stay in São Paulo, and also I would like to thank many Brazilian colleagues and friends for helping my study and life there.