Personal Information
Name: Na Xu
Title: Professor; PHD supervisor
E-mail: xuna@cumtb.edu.cn
Research Interests
AI for Geoenergy
Education/Work Background
Shandong University, Master;
China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing), PhD;
China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing), Professor
Teaching Courses
Geoscience Big Data and Cloud Computing;
Geoscience Software Development;
Mathematical Geosciences;
Principles and Applications of the Database;
Object-oriented Programming;
Machine Learning Applications in Geophysics;
Social service
Council Member of Chinese Society for Mineralogy Petrology and Geochemistry;
Member of the Coal Green Exploration and Development Committee of the Geological Society of China;
Associate Editor-in-Chief for Geoenergy Research;
Guest editor for International Journal of Coal Geology;
Youth editorial board member for Bulletin of Mineralogy, Petrology and Geochemistry;
Key Research Funding
1. Na Xu. Research on topology discovery and its theory of supply chain information system. National Natural Science Foundation of China, PI;
2. Na Xu. Spatial data service composition model and its quality of service in cloud computing. National Natural Science Foundation of China, PI;
3. Na Xu. Toward the source and modes of occurrence of elements in coal through big data. National Natural Science Foundation of China, PI;
4. Na Xu. Toward the intelligent model of strategic metal resources in coal-bearing strata through big data. National Key Research and Development Program of China, PI;
5. Na Xu. Automatic updating platform for transparent coal mine geological disaster maps. National Key Research and Development Program of China, PI;
Selected Publications (Past 5 Years ,* denotes Corresponding author)
1. Zhu, W., Shen, L., Xu, N. *, Kong, J., Engle, M.A., Finkelman, R.B., Li, F., Wang, Q., Li, P., Zhang, S., Dai, S., 2025. Rare earth elements and yttrium in Chinese coals: Distribution and economic significance. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 212, 115423.
2. Xu, N. *, Yang, Y., Peng, M., Li, Q., Xu, C., Dai, S., 2022. Toward the threshold of radiation hazards of U in Chinese coal through the cart algorithm. Environmental Science & Technology, 56(3), 1864-1874.
3. Xu, N. *, Wang, Q., Li, P., Kong, J., Li, Q., Engle, M.A., Hower, J.C., Zhu, W., 2025. Intelligent identification of coal macerals using improved semi-supervised semantic segmentation methods. International Journal of Coal Geology, 300, 104712.
4. Zhu, W., Xu, N. *, Hower, J.C., 2025. Unveiling the predictive power of machine learning in coal gross calorific value estimation: An interpretability perspective. Energy, 318, 134781.
5. Meng, L., Zhu, W., Xu, N.*, Hower, J.C., 2026. Explainable AI for coal Hardgrove grindability index prediction: a genetic programming and linear regression approach. Fuel, 404, 136072.
6. Xu, N*., Li, P., Kong, J., Engle, M. A., Zhu, W., Li, Q., & Finkelman, R. B.,2026. Predicting the prospect of rare earth elements and yttrium recovery from coal using machine learning. International Journal of Coal Preparation and Utilization, 1–24.
7. Xu, N., Li, F., Zhu, W., Engle, M.A., Kong, J., Li, P., Wang, Q., Shen, L., Finkelman, R.B., Dai, S. *, 2025. Predicting the concentrations of rare earth elements and yttrium in coal using self-organizing map. Natural Resources Research, 34, 1467–1479.
8. Xu, N. *, Jiao, F., Hower, J. C., Wang, Q., Li, P., Wang, Y., & Zhu, W., 2026. An improved U-net model for the identification of coal macerals. International Journal of Coal Preparation and Utilization, 1–20.
9. Li, P., Lin, W., Wang, Y., Xu, N. *, Zhu, W., Liu, W., 2025. Semi-supervised named entity recognition in low-resource domains: A case study of rare earth elements in coal. Ore Geology Reviews, 185, 106796.
10. Zhu, W., Liu, W., Xu, N. *, Finkelman, R.B., 2025. Modes of occurrence of critical elements in coals from the Guanbanwusu mine, Inner Mongolia, China: A novel stratigraphy-constrained sliding-window correlation approach. Applied Geochemistry, 196, 106638.
11. Li, P., Wang, Y., Xu, N. *, 2025. A novel framework for identifying hot spots in coal research. Natural Resources Research, 34, 2685–2700.
12. Xu, N. *, Zhu, W., Wang, R., Li, Q., Wang, Z., Finkelman, R. B. ,2023. Application of self-organizing maps to coal elemental data. International Journal of Coal Geology, 277, 104358. 13. Li, P., Xu, N. *, Wang, Q., Wang, Y., Li, F., Zhu, W., Li, Q., 2025. Knowledge graphs analysis for research on minerals in coal. Earth Science Informatics, 18, 361.
14. Li, P., Wang, Y., Xu, N. *, 2025. Measuring Interdisciplinarity in Geology: A Semantic Analysis Approach. Earth and Space Science, 12, e2025EA004494.
15. Xu, N. *, Wang, Z., Dai, Y., Li, Q., Zhu, W., Wang, R., Finkelman, R. B.,2023. Prediction of higher heating value of coal based on gradient boosting regression tree model. International Journal of Coal Geology, 274, 104293.
16. Xu, N. *, Zhu, W., Huang, B., Engle, M. A., Li, Q., Finkelman, R. B., 2023. Modes of occurrence of elements in high-germanium coals using correlation analysis algorithm. Applied Geochemistry, 152, 105647.
17. Xu, N. *, Finkelman, R. B., Xu, C., Dai, S. ,2020. What do coal geochemistry statistics really mean?. Fuel, 267, 117084.
18. Xu, N. *, Xu, C., Finkelman, R. B., Engle, M. A., Li, Q., Peng, M., He, L., Huang, B., Yang, Y. ,2022. Coal elemental (compositional) data analysis with hierarchical clustering algorithms. International Journal of Coal Geology, 249, 103892.
Honors
1. Awarded the Second Prize for Excellent Teaching Quality at China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing).
2. Awarded the Second Prize of the Science and Technology Award by the China National Coal Association.
3. Awarded the First Prize of Science and Technology Progress Award of Shandong Province.
4. Excellent Teaching Achievement Award in the Coal Industry.
5. Core Member of the Excellent Teaching Team in the Coal Industry.
6. Awarded the Best Oral Presentation at the 9th International Workshop on Compositional Data Analysis (Codeworks 2022).
7. Awarded the Best Poster at the 41th Annual Meeting of the Society for Organic Petrology (TSOP).
8. Guided students to the National Second Prize in the 17th China Post-Graduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling.
9. Guided students to the National Third Prize in the 18th China Post-Graduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling.
10. Guided students to the Early Bird Award in the National Coal Industry Mine AI Large Language Model Competition.