Dr. Tang, as a Chair Professor (funded by Cheung Kong Scholar Programme from State Education Ministry), is the Director of the Deep Underground Research Center (DURC) of Dalian University of Technology, and the Chief Professor of Structural Geology (Part-time), University of Geosciences (Wuhan), China. He was also the Vice President of the Chinese Society of Rock Mechanics and Engineering CSRME, and was the China National Group Chairman of International Society of Rock Mechanics.

In 1984, he started his Ph.D research, in Northeastern University, Shenyang, P.R.China, and got his Ph.D in 1988. In 1991, he continued his post-doctoral work in Imperial College, London, UK. Then, as an academic visitor, he had lots of experience working in Canada, Sweden, Singapore, Switzerland and Hong Kong. 

He leads several major research projects in rock mechanics, especially on rock failure process analysis and monitoring in civil engineering, and is the chief scientist for a National 973 program for fundamental research. 

His work is funded by the “Trans-Century Training Programme Foundation for Outstanding Young Scholars in China” from the State Education Ministry and by the "Special Natural Science Foundation for Outstanding Young Scholars in China" from National Nature Science Foundation. So far, he has published more than 300 technical papers on rock failure mechanisms and civil engineering, and is the author of five Chinese books of rock mechanics and the principle author of “Rock Failure Mechanism” published by CRC (Taylor & Francis Group, 2010, UK).

In recent years, he is keen on Earth science research and, based on mechanics thinking, he put forward a new theory of Earth Evolution.

(Tang C.A, Webb A.A.G, Moore W.B, et al. 2020. Breaking Earth’s shell into a global plate network. Nature Communications, 11(1): 3621)

CV of Chunan TANG.pdf