沈亦旸/Daniel
I do environmental modelling. Wherever that takes me, I bring a camera.
Move the mouse: the light follows it and the contours give under your hand
ScrollI graduated with an MSc in Urban Environmental Management from Wageningen in May 2026 and I'm now looking for a PhD position. My thesis estimated how much microplastic rivers retain, sub-basin by sub-basin worldwide, with machine learning benchmarked against the MARINA-Multi model.
Before Wageningen, I studied forestry in China and Canada, where my first lab work was on soil microbes, and I monitored dissolved organic carbon in the wetland forests of Lapland with the University of Eastern Finland. I've been lucky to learn in four very different landscapes, and I carry a camera to each of them.
Next, I want to focus on environmental modelling.
This site is a working notebook: my research, the places I've stood in, and the photographs I've made there.
Rivers keep what we drop.
Soils breathe out what we farm.
I count both, and photograph the light left over.
Looking for a position · Europe
Large-scale modelling of agriculture, water and other environmental systems, following on from the catchment-scale water and microplastic modelling I did at Wageningen.
Wageningen University & Research · Wageningen, Netherlands
Supervisor: Dr. Maryna Strokal & Dr. Ilaria Micella
Developed a hybrid framework to estimate spatially explicit microplastic river retention at the sub-basin scale worldwide, combining large-language-model (LLM) data extraction with machine learning (LightGBM) and benchmarking against the MARINA-Multi model. Graded 9.0/10, in the Water Systems and Global Change Group.
University of Eastern Finland · Joensuu, Finland
Co-taught an AI4Science lecture and supported students through the international summer school programme.
University of Eastern Finland · Joensuu & Lapland, Finland
Supervisor: Prof. Frank Berninger
Boreal-forest fieldwork in Lapland focused on dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in subarctic catchments, plus lab work and GIS watershed analysis.
Wageningen University & Research · Wageningen, Netherlands
Supervisor: Dr. Maryna Strokal & Dr. Ilaria Micella
Specialization: Water Systems and Global Change. WIMEK Honours research programme 2025-2026. Focus on water quality, microplastic fate, and scenario analysis at catchment scale. Graduated end of May 2026.
UBC, Faculty of Forestry · Vancouver, Canada
Supervisor: Dr. Andrew Adams
130,000+ tree inventory analysis for the City of Surrey: mortality, species, life-span patterns.
University of British Columbia · Vancouver, Canada
Supervisor: Prof. Melissa McHale & Cody Bingham (MSc)
Mapped UBC campus urban structure at 30 m resolution and analyzed land-use change impact on surface temperature 2014-2022. Group project applied a random-forest model to predict future LST in Wesbrook Village.
UBC, Pollinators and Climate Change Lab · Vancouver, Canada
Supervisor: Prof. Risa Sargant & Dr. Jens Ulrich
Field survey of insect and bumble-bee interactions with plants across 18 urban parks in Vancouver, with the Faculty of Land and Food Systems.
University of British Columbia · Vancouver, Canada
GPA 83.7 / 100. Graduated with honors and named to the Dean's Honor List. Supervisor: Dr. Andrew Almas.
State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Silviculture · Hangzhou, China
Supervisor: Prof. Yeqing Ying & Prof. Wenhui Shi
Two consecutive projects in the State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Silviculture, on phosphorus-solubilizing microorganism (PSM) ecology in moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) systems.
Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University · Hangzhou, China
GPA 87.7 / 100. Multiple national, provincial and institutional scholarships and life-science competition awards. Supervisors: Prof. Yeqing Ying & Prof. Wenhui Shi.
Drawn from years of GPS tracks I've recorded. Each glowing square is a roughly 10 km patch of the world I've passed through. Brighter means more time spent there.
Vancouver · Victoria · Nanaimo · Whitehorse
Utrecht · Amsterdam · Arnhem · The Hague · Groningen · Zwolle · Assen · Haarlem +1
Joensuu · Helsinki · Lappeenranta · Lahti · Kouvola
Hangzhou · Lhasa · Shanghai · Yichang · Chongqing · Langzhong · Xigazê · Nanchong +24
Hermanus · Mossel Bay · Cape Town · Port Elizabeth · Knysna · Benoni · Swellendam · George +1
Cologne · Duisburg · Berlin · Heidelberg · Düsseldorf · Munich · Hamburg · Frankfurt +9
Longyearbyen
Praia
Tórshavn · Klaksvík
Kiruna
Barcelona · Zaragoza · Tarragona
Paris · Versailles
Copenhagen
Lisbon
Antwerp · Brussels
A small 3D room with the photographs I like best. Drag to look around, click one to open it.
Go inEvery pin on the map is a place I've stood with a camera; the amber frames are films. Click one to open it. Drag the time range to travel through the months, or switch to the timeline view, where the photographs and films share one chronological ribbon.
Short films I shoot, edit and grade myself, from the Arctic to the southern tip of Africa. They live on Bilibili; press play to watch them here.
Short posts from LinkedIn: the science I'm reading, the end of one chapter, and the places in between.
For the final stop of my graduation trip, I visited the Faroe Islands at the end of August, and I brought my Wageningen diploma along! Maybe this is the first Wageningen University & Research diploma to make it all the way to the Faroe Islands? A memorable way to celebrate the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next, surrounded by some truly spectacular landscapes. #FaroeIslands#WUR#Graduation 
Total solar eclipse 2026, Calatayud, Spain! For fun, I built a small constructed language. It has its own words, a little grammar, and one writing system where each word is drawn as a single cat. The cat's body encodes the word: its sound and its meaning at once. Switch the site language to 猫语 to read the whole page in it.
How to read one cat
I'm looking for a PhD position in environmental modelling, and I'm always glad to talk about research collaborations, photography licensing, or anything to do with soils, water and climate. Pick whichever channel fits.
