Faculty
Ruda Zhang, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Office Location N119 Engineering Building 1, Houston, TX 77204-4003
Phone 713-743-0681 | Fax 713-743-4260
Email rudaz [at] uh.edu
Education
Ph.D., University of Southern California
B.E., Peking University
Professional Experience
Sep 2022 - present: Assistant Professor. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. University of Houston. Houston, TX.
Aug 2021 - Jul 2022: Phillip Griffiths Assistant Research Professor. Department of Mathematics. Duke University. Durham, NC.
Aug 2019 - Jul 2021: Postdoctoral fellow. Statistical & Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI). Durham, NC.
Jun 2018 - Jul 2019: Postdoctoral research associate. University of Southern California. Los Angeles, CA.
Classes
CIVE 3337 Structural Analysis
CIVE 6355 Structural Dynamics
CIVE 7397 Data-Driven Engineering
Awards & Honors
University of Cambridge, Isaac Newton Institute Travel Scholarship. 2023
SIAM Early Career Travel Award. 2022
INFORMS Quality, Statistics & Reliability (QSR) Best Paper Award. 2021
Professional Memberships
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Associate Member (A.M.ASCE).
Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI): Probabilistic Methods Committee (PMC). Elected Committee Member
United States Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM)
Technical Thrust Area in Uncertainty Quantification and Probabilistic Modeling (TTA-UQ&PM). Elected Committee Member-at-Large (1 of 2)
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM)
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society. Elected Member
Research Interests
I am interested in developing fast, reliable, and interpretable methods for data-driven engineering and uncertainty quantification, with applications in structural digital twins, energy infrastructure, and quantitative sustainability and resilience.
The specific research directions we pursue in our lab include:
Uncertainty quantification
Bayesian optimization in engineering design
Artificial intelligence for science
If you are interested to know more about our research scopes and activities, please visit our lab website at https://uq.uh.edu/
Invited Presentations / Lectures
- Multi-Scale Modeling and Simulation Lab, Gustave Eiffel University, France. Jun 19, 2023.
- Sandia National Lab. Virtual. May 23, 2023.
- Department of Engineering Systems and Environment, University of Virginia. Apr 18, 2023.
- GE Research. Mar 31, 2023.
- School of Mathematics, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Dec 12, 2022.
- Department of Statistical Science, University College London, United Kingdom. Dec 1, 2022.
- Smart Informatix Lab, Lyles School of Civil Engineering, Perdue University. Oct 17, 2022.
- Zachry Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University. Sep 2, 2022.
- Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Houston. Mar 14, 2022.
- Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Arkansas. Feb 17, 2022.
- Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Florida A&M University–Florida State University College of Engineering. Feb 15, 2022.
- Department of Energy Resources Engineering, Stanford University. Oct 11, 2021.
Conference Presentations
- USACM Thematic Conference on Uncertainty Quantification for Machine Learning Integrated Physics Modeling (UQ-MLIP 2024). Arlington, VA. Aug 12–14, 2024.
- 5th International Conference on Uncertainty Quantification in Computational Sciences and Engineering (UNCECOMP). Athens, Greece. June 12–14, 2023.
- SIAM-TXLA 2022. Houston, TX. Nov 4–6, 2022.
- 5th Annual Meeting of the SIAM Texas–Louisiana Section (SIAM-TXLA 2022) Houston, TX. Nov 4–6, 2022.
- INFORMS 2022 Annual Meeting. Indianapolis, IN. Oct 16–19, 2022.
- IMS/ASA Spring Research Conference (SRC) 2022. Virtual. May 19-20, 2022.
- SIAM Conference on Uncertainty Quantification (UQ22). Atlanta, GA. Apr 12–15, 2022.
- INFORMS 2021 Annual Meeting. Anaheim, CA. Oct 24-27, 2021. Quality, Statistics & Reliability (QSR) Best Paper Competition.
- International Chinese Statistical Association (ICSA) 2021 Applied Statistics Symposium. Virtual. Sep 12–15, 2021.
- Data Science, Statistics & Visualization (DSSV) Conference 2020. Virtual. July 29–31, 2020. Organized by International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC) International Statistical Institute (ISI).
- SAMSI Games, Decisions, Risk and Reliability (GDRR) Program Transportation Workshop. Durham, NC. March 9–11, 2020.
- Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) 2019 Annual Meeting. Seattle, WA. Oct 20–23 2019.
- METRANS Emerging Scholars Transportation Research (ESTR) Symposium 2019. Los Angeles, CA. Mar 29, 2019.
- National Travel Monitoring Exposition and Conference 2018 (NaTMEC 2018). Irvine, CA. June 10–13, 2018.
Contributed Talks
- Engineering Mechanics Institute and Probabilistic Mechanics & Reliability Conference 2024 (EMI/PMC 2024). Chicago, IL. May 28–31, 2024.
- 17th U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics (US NCCM 2023). Albuquerque, New Mexico. July 23–27, 2023.
- Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference 2023 (EMI 2023). Atlanta, GA. June 6–9, 2023.
- USACM Thematic Conference on Uncertainty Quantification for Machine Learning Integrated Physics Modeling (UQ-MLIP). Arlington, VA. Aug 18–19, 2022.
- Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference 2022 (EMI 2022). Baltimore, MD. May 31–Jun 3, 2022.
- Mechanistic Machine Learning and Digital Twins for Computational Science, Engineering & Technology (MMLDT-CSET 2021): An IACM Conference. San Diego, CA. Sep 26–29, 2021.
- Graduate-Faculty Seminar, Department of Mathematics, Duke University. Sep 20, 2021.
- Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference 2021 and Probabilistic Mechanics & Reliability Conference 2021 (EMI 2021/PMC 2021). Virtual. May 25–28, 2021.
- SAMSI Postdoctoral Fellow Seminars. Virtual. Mar 17, 2021.
- SAMSI Postdoctoral Fellow Seminars. Virtual. Oct 28, 2020.
- SAMSI Postdoctoral Fellow Seminars. Virtual. Apr 1, 2020.
- SAMSI Postdoctoral Fellow Seminars. Durham, NC. Oct 16, 2019.
- Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference 2019 (EMI 2019) joint with Geo-Institute. Pasadena, CA. June 18–21, 2019.
- 65th Annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International (NARSC 2018). San Antonio, TX. Nov 7–10, 2018.
- GIS-Pro 2018 & CalGIS 2018. Palm Springs, CA. Oct 9–12, 2018.
- Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference 2018 (EMI 2018). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. May 29—Jun 1, 2018.
- Probabilistic Mechanics & Reliability Conference 2016 (PMC 2016). Vanderbilt University, May 22–25, 2016.
- Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference 2016 (EMI 2016). Vanderbilt University, May 22–25, 2016.
- Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference 2015 (EMI 2015). Stanford University, June 16–19, 2015.
- The National Workshop on Resilience Research (NWRR) for Critical Infrastructure: Current Status and Challenges. National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA. October 22–23, 2015.
Selected Publications
- Digital Twins and Civil Engineering Phases: Reorienting Adoption Strategies. Taiwo A. Adebiyi and Nafeezat A. Ajenifuja and Ruda Zhang. Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering, 2024.
- Gaussian Process Subspace Prediction for Model Reduction. Ruda Zhang, Simon Mak, and David Dunson. SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing. 2022.
- Winner, INFORMS 2021 Quality, Statistics & Reliability (QSR) Best Paper Award. Normal - Normal-bundle Bootstrap. Ruda Zhang and Roger Ghanem. SIAM Journal on Mathematics of Data Science. 2021.
- Environmental Economics and Uncertainty: Review and a Machine Learning Outlook. Ruda Zhang, Patrick Wingo, Rodrigo Duran, Kelly Rose, Jennifer Bauer, Roger Ghanem. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science. 2020.
- Drivers Learn City-scale Intra-daily Dynamic Equilibrium. Ruda Zhang and Roger Ghanem. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. 2022.
- Demand, Supply and Performance of Street-hail Taxi. Ruda Zhang and Roger Ghanem. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. 2020.
Editorial Activities / Discussions in Refereed Journals
- Guest editor for the Journal of Machine Learning for Modeling and Computing (JMLMC), special issue on “Advancements and Applications of Multifidelity Machine Learning in Engineering”.