Rui Zhou

Incoming CS PhD student
MS in Computer Science
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

I currently work on physics-guided machine learning for land-atmosphere flux modeling at UIUC's Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment, advised by Prof. Kaiyu Guan and Prof. Sheng Wang. My research combines deep neural networks with biophysical process constraints to predict carbon and water fluxes across European and global ecosystems at continental scale. In my PhD, I plan to move toward Digital Twin research.

CV · LinkedIn · Google Scholar · ruizhou3@illinois.edu

Publications

• Oct 2025
  Demeter: A Parametric Model of Crop Plant Morphology from the Real World.

  Tianhang Cheng, Albert J. Zhai, Evan Z. Chen, Rui Zhou, et al.

  ICCV 2025

  paper project
• 2025
  Improved global SMAP daily 9 km surface soil moisture dataset with microwave radiative transfer process-guided machine learning (2015–2024).

  Sijia Feng, Aoyang Li, Rui Zhou, et al.

  Nature Scientific Data

  paper data
• Apr 2025
  Cross-scale Sensing of Field-level Essential Agroecosystem Variables for the EU Climate-smart Agriculture.

  Sheng Wang, Kaiyu Guan, J. E. Olesen, Rui Zhou, et al.

  EGU General Assembly 2025 · Vienna

  abstract
• Apr 2024
  Quantifying Evapotranspiration and Gross Primary Productivity Across Europe Using Radiative Transfer Process-Guided Machine Learning.

  Sheng Wang, Rui Zhou, E. Prikaziuk, et al.

  EGU General Assembly 2024 · Vienna

  abstract
• Apr 2024
  Detecting Field-level Crop Residue Cover across the EU Using Multi-source Satellite Data and Explainable Machine Learning.

  Sheng Wang, B. Yuan, K. Guan, J. E. Olesen, Rui Zhou, R. Gislum.

  EGU General Assembly 2024 · Vienna

  abstract

Awards

• Fiddler Innovation Graduate Student Fellowship, UIUC, 2025
• Celebration of Excellence, UIUC, 2025
• Fiddler Innovation Fellowship, NCSA, 2024