Rate My Professor Xiaoli Deng

Associate Professor Xiaoli Deng serves as Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Engineering (Surveying) at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She obtained her PhD in Geodesy from Curtin University in 2004, specializing in the improvement of geodetic parameter estimation in coastal regions from satellite radar altimetry. Previously, she was Associate Professor in Geo-science and Surveying Engineering at Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Mapping, China, from 1996 to 1999. Since joining the University of Newcastle around 2003, she has undertaken numerous roles, including Faculty Board Member (2003-2007 and 2014-2016), Research Seminars Coordinator (2003-2004), Discipline Newsletter Editor (2005-2016), University Representative to Institution of Surveyors NSW Hunter Mining Group (2005-2019), Industrial Experience Coordinator for Surveying (since 2016), and School of Engineering Committee Representative (since 2020). She holds prestigious positions such as Fellow of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG), Australian National Representative to IAG for the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (appointed 2019), and Chair of Satellite Altimetry in the IAG Gravity Commission. She has also been a Visiting Research Fellow at Taiwan National Chiao Tung University in 2003 and 2004, and serves on the Editorial Board of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters since 2014.

Her research specializes in satellite altimetry for geodetic and oceanographic applications, including development of waveform retracking algorithms to enhance data accuracy in coastal zones, monitoring of sea level variability, ocean currents, tides, extreme sea levels, marine gravity fields, bathymetry, and coastal ocean processes. She has secured 19 grants totaling $1,128,933, leading projects such as ARC Discovery Projects on marine bathymetry ($568,746, 2022-2025) and sea-level trends ($435,400, 2015-2017), and a NASA-funded project on geostrophic circulation ($425,300, 2008-2011). Notable publications include 'The International Altimetry Service 2024 (IAS2024) coastal sea level dataset and first evaluations' (Earth System Science Data, 2025), 'Australian Coastal Sea Level Trends Over 16 yr of Reprocessed Jason Altimeter 20-Hz Data Sets' (Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 2022), 'A New Method to Combine Coastal Sea Surface Height Estimates from Multiple Retrackers by Using the Dijkstra Algorithm' (Remote Sensing, 2023), and 'Satellite Altimetry' (book chapter, 2024). She has supervised 8 PhD students to completion, with 6 as principal supervisor, and her work has over 2300 citations on Google Scholar, with her retracking algorithms widely adopted internationally.