Zhe (Walter) Wang

Zhe (Walter) Wang

Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

About me

  • I am an Assistant Professor in Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
  • PhD & Postdoc Opening: I am looking for PhD students and Postdocs to work on smart building and building control starting from Spring/Autumn 2023. Students in building science, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, applied mathematics, or related majors with proficient coding skills are welcome to apply. Building modelling (EnergyPlus, Modelica preferred) or/and machine learning skill/experience is a plus. Please feel free to contact me with CV (and/or transcripts, sample publications) attached if you are interested. For more information, please check the PhD (CIVL) program and the HKUST Graduate School.
  • Prior to joining HKUST, I was a Project Scientist in Building Technology & Urban Systems Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 2018 to 2021. I received my Ph.D. in School of Architecture at Tsinghua University, supervised by Prof. Yingxin Zhu and Prof. Borong Lin, in 2017. I received my M.Phil degree in Department of Engineering at University of Cambridge in 2014, and B.Eng. degree in School of Architecture at Tsinghua University in 2011.
  • My current research interest is on smart building and building control. My broad research interests include model-based and data-driven performance enhancement for buildings and cities
  • Curriculum Vitae

Recent news

  • $\color{#0b5394}{Award:}$ Two papers on city-scale load prediction and energy flexibility published with Advances in Applied Energy have been awarded as the highly cited paper (Mar, 2024).
  • $\color{#0b5394}{Award:}$ Our team has won the second place in the 2023 NeurIPS CityLearn Challenge (Nov, 2023)
  • $\color{#5c1d9f}{Career:}$ I was named as the World’s Top 2% Scientists 2023 by Stanford University & Elsevier for the third consecutive year (Oct, 2023)
  • $\color{#37a55a}{Funding:}$ I was awarded the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars by NSFC, as the PI, working on Advanced building control for energy efficiency and load flexibility (Aug, 2023)
  • $\color{#37a55a}{Funding:}$ I was awarded the National Science Fund for Young Scholars by NSFC, as the PI, working on Cabin thermal management for electrical vehicles (Aug, 2023)
  • $\color{#37a55a}{Funding:}$ I was awarded the Shui On Sustainable Research Fund, as the PI, working on Modeling and optimization for building energy system (July, 2023)
  • $\color{#5c1d9f}{Career:}$ I will work as the task leader for the International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA) Project 2: Community Development and Usage of BOPTEST with researchers from LBNL, ETH Zurich, KU Leuven etc. I will co-lead Task 4 on Controller Testing with Esther Borkowski from ETH Zurich. (July, 2023)
  • $\color{#37a55a}{Funding:}$ I was awarded the Early Career Scheme by Hong Kong Research Grant Committee, as the PI, working on Model Predictive Control in Hong Kong’s Residential Buildings for Energy Efficiency and Load Flexibility (June, 2023)
  • $\color{#37a55a}{Funding:}$ I was awarded the Shenzhen Sustainable Development Research Grant, as the co-PI, working on Fault detection and control optimization for air-conditioning system of commercial buildings (May, 2023)
  • $\color{#0b5394}{Award:}$ Our paper AlphaMobileSensing: A virtual testbed for mobile environmental monitoring has been selected as the cover article by Building Simulation (Apr, 2023)
  • $\color{#37a55a}{Funding:}$ I was awarded the Fei Chi En Education and Research Fund, as the PI, working on An AI-assisted solution for low-cost high-resolution urban scale environmental simulation (Feb, 2023)
  • $\color{#37a55a}{Funding:}$ I was awarded the CRF 2022/23 Young Collaborative Research Grant (YCRG) funded by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council, as the PC, working on Toward 2060 Carbon Neutrality: Life-cycle Planning and Design of Photovoltaic Integrated Green Roof (PVIGR) Systems for Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area (Jan, 2023)
  • $\color{#5c1d9f}{Career:}$ I was named as the World’s Top 2% Scientists 2022 by Stanford University & Elsevier for the second consecutive year (Oct, 2022)
  • $\color{#0b5394}{Award:}$ Our team has won the second place in the 基于柔性负荷任务的需量优化策略挑战赛 organized by 科大讯飞 (Oct, 2022)
  • $\color{#37a55a}{Funding:}$ We collaborate with Tencent to work on Model Predictive Control for energy efficient data center sponsored by Tencent Open Fund (Sep, 2022)
  • $\color{#5c1d9f}{Career:}$ I accept the invitation to serve as the Section Editor for Energy and Buildings (Aug, 2022)
  • $\color{#37a55a}{Funding:}$ We collaborate with Midea to work on Model Predictive Control for Demand Response (Aug, 2022)
  • $\color{#5c1d9f}{Career:}$ We establish the Green Building and Smart Construction Lab with HKUST Shen Zhen-Hong Kong Collaborative Innovation Research Institute (Jul, 2022)
  • $\color{#0b5394}{Award:}$ Our team has won the first place, the Gold Award, Best Use of Tencent Cloud Award, and Huawei Most Innovative Use of Data Award in the 2022 Global AI Challenge for Building E&M Facilites organized by Hong Kong EMSD. Official leader board shows our solution has a 10% lower RMSE compared with the runner-up’s solution (Jun, 2022)
  • $\color{#37a55a}{Funding:}$ I was awarded the 2021 Foshan University-Enterprise Collaborative R&D Fund, as the co-PI, working on Thermal Management for the Autonomous Cruise UVC Disinfection and Microclimate Air-conditioning Robot (Jan, 2022)
  • $\color{#5c1d9f}{Career:}$ I accepted the invitation to join the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations as Fellow (Nov, 2021)
  • $\color{#5c1d9f}{Career:}$ I accepted the invitation to join the editorial board of Frontiers in Built Environment as Associate Editor (Nov, 2021)
  • $\color{#5c1d9f}{Career:}$ I was named as the World’s Top 2% Scientists 2021 by Stanford University & Elsevier (Oct, 2021)
  • $\color{#5c1d9f}{Career:}$ I accepted the offer to join The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as Assistant Professor (Jul, 2021)
  • $\color{#5c1d9f}{Career:}$ I accepted the invitation to join the editorial board of Building Simulation as Subject Editor (Jan, 2021)
  • $\color{#5c1d9f}{Career:}$ I was invited to give a speech on the Seventh-Round High-level Consultation on U.S.-China People to People Exchange. This event was chaired by Chinese Vice Premier Yandong Liu and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Zhe was the ONLY representative of Chinese young scholar (Jun, 2016)
  • $\color{#5c1d9f}{Career:}$ I was selected as a Schwarzman Scholar and enrolled into the Inaugural Class (Dec, 2015)