I am a PhD candidate at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, affiliated with SBE@UBC and under the supervision of Professor Haibo Feng.
Research interests
Leveraging machine learning techniques to achieve intelligent building operation and construction. For operation, I care about demand-responsive and occupant-centric control, building energy efficiency, and indoor environment quality. For construction, I pursue reinforcement learning and imitation learning-based construction robot control.
Academic journey
- Jun 2026 - I have passed my PhD Comprehensive Exam, officially advancing to PhD Candidate at UBC.
- Jun 2026 - One paper “From Vision to Physics: Generative Occupant Modeling and 3D Spatial Data Architecture in Indoor Environments” was accepted by Energy and Buildings.
- Feb 2026 - One paper “Benchmarking zero-shot vision-language models against supervised learning for concurrent metabolic rate and clothing insulation estimation” was accepted by Building and Environment.
- Jan 2026 - I completed my one-year term at NRC. Under the supervision of Dr. Zhe Xiao, I conducted literature reviews on parameters for stochastic hygrothermal modeling, performed hygrothermal simulations on wall assemblies, and analyzed results across representative Canadian cities. Research outcomes as the author of three journal papers are forthcoming.
- Jul 2025 - One paper “Large Language Model and Synthetic Dataset based Occupant Clothing Insulation Recognition” was accepted and presented at the joint CSCE/CRC 2025 Conference.
- May 2025 - I officially joined the $8.27M NRCan/NRC-funded national initiative on sustainable modular construction, serving as the lead for Task 3.3 (Optimal control of energy efficiency) under Theme 3.
- Apr 2025 - One paper “Demand response based battery energy storage systems design and operation optimization” was accepted by Energy and Buildings.
- Jan 2025 - I was hired as a student researcher by Construction Research Centre, National Research Council of Canada.
- Dec 2024 - One paper “How far back shall we peer? Optimal air handling unit control leveraging extensive past observations” was accepted by Building and Environment.
- Sep 2024 - I was the recipient of the President’s Academic Excellence Initiative PhD Award at UBC.
- Sep 2024 - I started my second PhD journey at UBC.
- May 2024 - I earned my MASc from UBC. Under the guidance of Professor Zhengbo Zou, I completed my master’s thesis titled “Integrated optimization of energy systems in buildings: from demand responsive battery storage to intelligent HVAC control”, achieving a grade of A+.
- Jan 2024 - One paper “Expert Demonstration Collection of Long-Horizon Construction Tasks in Virtual Reality” was published in Computing in Civil Engineering 2023.
- Aug 2023 - One paper “Enhancing construction robot learning for collaborative and long-horizon tasks using generative adversarial imitation learning” was accepted by Advanced Engineering Informatics.
- Sep 2022 - I was the recipient of CITech Fellowship at UBC.
- Sep 2022 - I started my Master of Applied Science (MASc) in Civil Engineering at ICON lab, the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
- May 2022 - I voluntarily withdrew from my PhD program at KAIST to explore broader opportunities and pursue higher-impact research aligned with my long-term career goals. During my time in the program, I completed ten courses with a GPA of 90.22/100.
- Jul 2020 - I passed the PhD qualification examination and became a PhD candidate.
- Oct 2019 - I earned my MSc from CityUHK. Under the guidance of Professor Hin Wa Li, I completed my master’s thesis titled “Towards Net-Zero Energy: Deep Learning-Based Energy Consumption Prediction and Photovoltaic Strategy Optimization for Subtropical School Buildings”, achieving a grade of A-.
- Sep 2019 - I was the recipient of Korean National Scholarship Tier 1 at KAIST.
- Sep 2019 - I started my first PhD journey at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
- Sep 2018 - I started my Master of Science in Civil and Architectural Engineering at City University of Hong Kong.
- Jun 2018 - I earned my Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Beijing Jiaotong University.
- Jun 2014 - Graduated from Urumqi No.1 High School, I achieved a top 1.17% ranking (1900 out of 162,600 examinees) in the 2014 Gaokao (Chinese National College Entrance Examination).
Beyond research
I enjoy learning languages and can hold daily conversations in both Korean and Japanese. I am passionate about music, films, and TV dramas, and I also enjoy singing, playing basketball, and staying active at the gym. Outside campus, I like traveling and discovering new restaurants & cafes around the city.