Rui Zhu

Rui Zhu is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include geospatial semantics, spatial statistics, as well as their broader interactions in geospatial artificial intelligence (Geo-AI). More concretely, he combines theory-informed approach and data-driven approach to address geospatial challenges such as geospatial data interoperability, spatial predictions, qualitative spatial reasoning, and so on. Zhu's work has been applied to a wide range of applications, including urban studies, global health, environmental modeling, as well as humanitarian aids. He is currently working on the KnowWhereGraph (KWG) project funded by NSF.

Zhu obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2020 under the advise of Dr. Krzysztof Janowicz and Dr. Phaedon Kyriakidis. He holds a M.S. degree in Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh working with Dr. Hassan Karimi.