Department of Geography and Resource Management (GRM), The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Prof. WU Zherong

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Faculty Member

Prof. WU Zherong

Assistant Professor

B.Eng. (Wuhan U)
PhD (CUHK)
Postdoc (Cornell)

(852) 3943-4195

zherongwu@cuhk.edu.hk Visit personal website >

RESEARCH PROJECTS

    • 01/2027-12/2030 Knowledge-Guided Radar Remote Sensing of Land Subsidence in Megacities for Urban Resilience (PI, RGC General Research Fund, HK$ 754,983)
    • 06/2026-06/2028 AI–Satellite Integration for Carbon Neutrality Assessment in Highly Urbanized Regions (PI, General R&D Project, 1+1+1 CUHK-CUHK(SZ)-GDST Joint Collaboration Fund, HK$ 550,000)
    • 06/2025-06/2028 Physics-Guided Multi-Source Remote Sensing for High-Resolution Aboveground Biomass Estimation in Tropical and Subtropical Forests (PI, CUHK Direct Grant for Research 2025-26, HK$ 100,000)
    • 03/2026-10/2026 Integrating Satellite Observations and AI to Improve Terrestrial Carbon Sink Projections in the Greater Bay Area (PI, CDMP Student Research and Innovation Scheme, HK$ 150,000)
    • 01/2026-06/2028 From Aerospace to Classroom: An AI-Powered Immersive Teaching and Learning Platform Based on CUHK Satellites for Cross-Disciplinary Education (PI, UGC Teaching Development and Language Enhancement Grant, HK$ 1,098,130)
    • 01/2025-01/2028 Integration of Carbon Satellite Remote Sensing and Modeling for High-Accuracy Greenhouse Gas Monitoring and Source Identification (Co-I, Innovation and Technology Fund, HK$ 26,535,560)
    • 01/2025-12/2027 Multimodal Data-Driven Land Subsidence Time-Series InSAR Monitoring and Pattern Recognition Method in Coastal Cities (PI, NSFC Young Scientists Fund, CNY 300,000)
    • 09/2024-08/2026 Curbing the Climate Model Uncertainties in Predicting the 21st Century Terrestrial Carbon Sink Strength Through Deep Learning (PI, Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, US$ 182,770)
    • 07/2024-06/2026 Scaling A Solution to Climate Change, Health, Agriculture, Water and Energy Challenges in Africa (Participant, Cornell Climate Solutions Fund, US$ 150,000)
    • 01/2025-06/2026 ACED: Planet-scale AI for accelerating environmental science-Invasive species and Beyond (Participant, NSF Accelerating Computing-Enabled Scientific Discovery, US$ 500,000)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

    • Gu, Y., Meng, L., Wang, Y., Wu, Z., Pan, Y., Zhao, Y., Detto, M., & Wu, J. (2025). Uncovering the role of solar radiation and water stress factors in constraining decadal intra-site spring phenology variability in diverse ecosystems across the Northern Hemisphere. New Phytologist, 246(5): 1986-2003.
    • Wu, Z., Lehner, F., Luo, Y., Sun, W., Wen, J., & Sun, Y. (2024). Constraining Climate Model Uncertainties in Predicting Terrestrial Carbon Sink Strength Through Deep Learning. In American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Meeting 2024, Washington, D.C., United States, 9-13 December 2024.
    • Wang, Z., Wu, Z., Yang, T., & Ma, P. (2024). Sequential image registration algorithm based on the PrePS points association for GNSS-based InBSAR systems. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 62: 5226012.
    • Wu, Z., Ma, P., Zhang, X., & Ye, G. (2024). Efficient management and processing of massive InSAR images using an HPC-based cloud platform. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 17: 2866-2876.
    • Ma, P., Yu, C., Jiao, Z., Zheng, Y., Wu, Z.*, Mao, W., & Lin, H. (2024). Improving time-series InSAR deformation estimation for city clusters by deep learning-based atmospheric delay correction. Remote Sensing of Environment, 304: 114004.
    • Ma, P., Wu, Z., Zhang, Z., & Au, F. (2024). SAR-Transformer-based decomposition and geophysical interpretation of InSAR time-series deformations for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. Remote Sensing of Environment, 302: 113962.
    • Wu, Z., Ma, P., Zheng, Y., Gu, F., Liu, L., & Lin, H. (2023). Automatic detection and classification of land subsidence in deltaic metropolitan areas using distributed scatterer InSAR and Oriented RCNN. Remote Sensing of Environment, 290: 113545.
    • Wu, Z., Zhang, X., Cai, J., Ma, P., & Kwan, M.-P. (2023). Understanding spatially non-stationary effects of natural and human-induced factors on land subsidence based on InSAR and multi-source geospatial data: A case study in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. International Journal of Digital Earth, 16(2): 4404-4427.
    • Liu, Y., Kwan, M.-P., & Wu, Z. (2022). Visualizing and quantifying the spatiotemporal expansion of
      the Blue Lentic Belt in Alabama and Mississippi. Water Research, 217: 118444.
    • Wu, Z., Zhao, Z., Ma, P., & Huang, B. (2021). Real-world DEM super-resolution based on generative adversarial networks for improving InSAR topographic phase simulation. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 14: 8373-8385.
    • Zhao, Z., Wu, Z., Zheng, Y., & Ma, P. (2021). Recurrent neural networks for atmospheric noise removal from InSAR time series with missing values. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 180: 227-237.

Teaching Fields

  • Aerospace science
  • Remote sensing
  • Geoinformatics

Research interests

  • Satellite remote sensing
  • AI for Science
  • Urban Geohazard
  • Terrestrial Carbon Cycle

Services/ Posts

    • Topical associate editor, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
    • Member,  Young Scientists Working Committee, Chinese National Committee of International Society for Digital Earth
    • Scientific review committee member, IEEE/GRSS International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS)
    • Session convener & Chair, American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Meeting
    • Session chair, American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting
    • Session Convener, European Geosciences Union General Assembly

Awards

    • 2026    Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury, 51st International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva
    • 2025    Best Presentation Award, ISPRS–ISDE 2025 The Joint ISPRS conference on Geo-Digitalization for Sustainable Development Goals and 3rd Youth Innovation Forum of Digital Earth (First author is my student)
    • 2024    Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, Schmidt Sciences
    • 2024    Postgraduate Research Output Award, CUHK
    • 2023    1st Place, American Association of Geographers Remote Sensing Specialty Group Honors Paper Competition
    • 2023    1st Place, Excellent PhD Dissertation Award, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Hong Kong Chapter
    • 2023    Rising Star in GIS, China University GIS Forum
    • 2023    Special Prize, China Geospatial Technology Advancement Award
    • 2018    National Scholarship, Ministry of Education, China
    • 2018    Rising Star in Remote Sensing, Wuhan University

SUGGESTED RESEARCH TOPICS FOR POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS

Multi-Source Satellite Remote Sensing

AI for Science and Geospatial Big Data

Urban Geohazard and Natural Disaster Monitoring

Climate Change and Terrestrial Carbon Cycle

I am currently recruiting postdoctoral fellows, PhD students, and research assistants with backgrounds in remote sensing, GIS, AI, ecology, and environmental science. Outstanding undergraduate students with a strong interest in research are also encouraged to apply. Please email me your CV if you are interested.

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