Ruichuan Zhang

Role and Background

Dr. Ruichuan Zhang serves as an Assistant Professor for the Construction Engineering and Management program in the Myers-Lawson School of Construction. He joined Virginia Tech in 2022.

Dr. Ruichuan’s research focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics for intelligent and sustainable built environments. In his current research, Ruichuan is exploring AI and Internet of things (IoT)-based methods to improve the adaptiveness and accessibility of buildings and environmental monitoring and compliance for construction projects. He aims to advance the knowledge of the design, construction, and operation of resilient and sustainable buildings, civil infrastructure, and cities through machine learning, natural language processing and understanding, computer vision, multimodal data sensing, fusion, analytics, building information modeling (BIM), and human-centered approaches.

Education

Ruichuan holds a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering with Computational Science and Engineering concentration from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His area of research was automated compliance checking for safe, accessible, and sustainable buildings. He holds two Master’s degrees in Civil Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor’s degree in Management Science and Engineering from the Central University of Finance and Economics.