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David Zhen Yin

Research Scientist
David Zhen Yin is the co-founder and program director of Stanford Mineral-X to lead the research of sustainable critical minerals explorations for renewable energy transitions. He is also the principal scientist at Stanford Center for Earth Resources Forecasting and Co-PI of the Stanford-KoBold collaboration. He develops data-scientific approaches for prediction, uncertainty quantification, and decision-making in critical earth resources exploration and development.

David developed broad experience working with complex projects involving academia and industry and broad knowledge of the fields. His research delivered several key technologies transferred as in-house technologies in Chevron, Equinor, and KoBold. In addition, his research developments have been implemented on various subjects, from Antarctica bed topography modeling, critical mineral explorations in Canada/China/US, and the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico projects.

Before joining Stanford, David was a Research Associate at Edinburgh Time-Lapse Project in Scotland, leading a geophysical monitoring research project in collaboration with Equinor from 2016 to 2018. He was also a technology consultant at Equinor's Research Center in Bergen, Norway. Then, he was a Chevron CoRE Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford from 2018 to 2021.

David received his Ph.D. in Geosciences from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK, in 2016. His research interests include data science for geosciences, geological uncertainty quantification, and decision-making under uncertainty. He has authored one book and tens of articles in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences.