Zhijing (Zee) Wang's Short Bio
Zhijing (Zee) Wang is currently Manager
of Reservoir Properties from Seismic and Formation Evaluation
Services at Chevron Energy
Technology Company, a Division of Chevron U.S.A. Inc. in
He holds both Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from Stanford University and a B.S. degree from Chengdu University of Technology (formerly
known as Chengdu Institute of Geology) in
Zhijing was born and grew up in a remote village in Linyi, Shandong Province where there was no electricity, no paved roads, no machinery, and no clock. When he was a baby, he almost starved to death (a few times!) during the four-year famine (1959 to 1963) after the "Great Leap Forward Movement (1957 to 1959)". When the Cultural Revolution started, he was forced to quit school at 4th grade in 1969 and worked in the field growing sweet potatoes and fed pigs. He applied to middle school in 1971 but was denied due to his family's "anti-revolutionary" background. Half a year later, he managed to attend middle school classes in another remote village (where everyone applied got admitted). That was the first turning point in his life because otherwise he would have been with the pigs forever! Benefiting from the short-lived education reform (1973-1974) by Deng Xiao Ping and being regional number one in entrance exams, he was admitted to high school in 1973 (another turning point). After graduating in 1975 being number one on every subject except physical education (PE), he went back to the village and worked as a hard-laborer and restroom cleaner. His biggest, and wildest, dream was to become a countryside teacher at the village's elementary school so he could avoid the often 14-hour/day hard labor. But unfortunately he never realized his dream because of his family background.
After the Cultural Revolution, Zhijing took
the college entrance exams in December 1977. He prepared for the exams under a
kerosene lamp at nights after long days of hard labor. As a result, he had a
black nose every morning, caused by the kerosene smoke (Zudolf,
the black nosed reindeer). He walked three hours to the exam place and took the
three-day tests in the bitter cold of
After his B.S. degree (January 1982) and
three days of intense exams (this time he had better things than boiled sweet
potatoes to eat), he was selected to study abroad by the Chinese Ministry of
Education (360 were selected from about half million college graduates). He
came to the Department of Geophysics,
Zhijing is not only interested in a wide
spectrum of technical and research subjects, but also active in serving the
communities and professional societies. He is co-founder and served as Vice
Chairman of Chevron’s Asian Employee Network, Special Advisor to The
Chinese Petroleum Society (Geophysical Exploration), and Overseas Academic
Committee member of the State Key Laboratory for Geophysical Exploration,
Zhijing was an Associate Editor for GEOPHYSICS between 1996 and 2004, and currently serves as a member of the SEG Global Affairs Committee, Development and Production Geophysics Committee, Interpretation Committee, Student and Academic Liaison Committee, and Translations Committee.
Zhijing was also a member of the Overseas Professionals' Visiting Group to China.
Zhijing and Professor Amos Nur are coeditors of three books "Seismic and Acoustic Velocities in Reservoir Rocks, Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3". He, along with David Lumley and Ron Behrens, won the Award for the Best Paper Presented at the 1997 SEG Annual Meeting and Exhibition.
Zhijing is a recipient of the SEG Virgil Kauffman Gold Medal Award in 2002 for his work in seismic pore fluid properties and rock physics.
He is also enlisted in "Who's Who in Science and Engineering of the World" and "Who's Who in the West". He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the SEG Foundation since January 2006.