Yunbo Xie received the B.Sc. degree in physics from Ocean University of Qingdao, Qingdao, China, in 1982, the M.S. degree in acoustics from Shanghai Acoustics Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1982, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of British Columbia, Canada, in 1991.
From 1987 to 1991, he conducted his doctoral research at the Institute of Ocean Sciences on sea-ice wave-mechanical properties and failure processes of floating ice sheets using passive geo- and hydro-acoustic techniques. After receiving the Ph.D. degree, he continued his sea-ice research as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Victoria, Victorial, BC, Canada, until 1995, when he joined the Pacific Salmon Commission (PSC) as a Hydro-acoustic Scientist. Since the PSC, he has been involved in a developmental project of using various sonar technologies to estimate Pacific salmon stocks in riverine environments. His current research topics include split-beam sonar tracking of migratory salmon, statistical modeling of fish behavior, development of acoustical target-tracking algorithms, and the design of visualized user-interactive data processing software for fisheries acoustic data.