Meet CET’s Dr. Rui Wu

CET’s Department of Computer Science has a new assistant professor, Dr. Rui Wu.

Welcome aboard, Dr. Wu!

1. What will you teach? I will teach CSCI 4710 – Introduction to Developing e-Business Systems and CSCI 6710 Developing e-Commerce Systems in 2019 Spring. I have four years of web application development experience and I am familiar with modern tools and libraries. 

2. Why did you choose to come to ECU and CET? I chose ECU because of my wife. She has lived in dry places for more than 20 years and would like to start our new life on the east coast. About 20 years ago, my uncle bought me a desktop. I was deeply by attracted by it and eager to figure out how it works. Therefore, I chose computer science as my major and obtained my Ph.D.

3. What are your areas of research? My research interests are focusing on data mining and data visualization. Most of my projects are about interdisciplinary research.

4. Why are you excited about these areas? My research is not about pure theory and is very practical. I have been working with hydrological scientists for four years. One of my projects is about improving a rainfall prediction model. The original model requires abundant time to calibrate for accurate results (e.g. 3 years). My proposed method can generate equivalent quality results and requires a much shorter time (e.g. 1 day).

5. What would people be surprised to learn about you? When I was young, I wanted to be a cook. But my mom told me that cooking should be my hobby at most. Later, I changed my dream job to be a professor because my mom was a teacher.

6. What is your hometown? My hometown is Anshan, Liaoning Province in China.

7. Where did you get your undergrad, graduate degrees? I got my bachelor degree from Jilin University, which is a top 10 university in China. My master’s and doctoral degrees are from the University of Nevada, Reno.

8. What is your title? I am a computer science assistant professor.

9. Where did you work prior to joining ECU? What did you do? I worked in “The Solar Energy-Water-Environment Nexus in Nevada” and “Collaborative Research: The Western Consortium for Watershed Analysis, Visualization, and Experiments” NSF projects for the last five years. My main jobs were improving environmental models with data mining techniques and programming data visualization applications.