The project Knowledge-Guided Radar Remote Sensing of Land Subsidence in Megacities for Urban Resilience, led by Prof. Zherong Wu, has been awarded funding under the General Research Fund (GRF) 2026/27 by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC).
Prof. Zherong Wu has been appointed as a Topical Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (IEEE J-STARS).
Prof. Zherong Wu has been appointed as a member of the Young Scientists Committee of the China National Committee of the International Society for Digital Earth (CNISDE-YES), which promotes academic exchange and collaboration among outstanding early-career researchers in Digital Earth and related fields.
Several EIL members participated in the UN ESCAP workshop “Protecting Development Gains: Leveraging Emerging Technologies and Space Applications for Resilient Development” held in Shenzhen, China. During the workshop, PhD students Qianxin Wang and Chuoran Li delivered oral presentations on their research, while undergraduate student Liyan Wu participated in a panel discussion.
The collaborative project “AI–Satellite Integration for Carbon Neutrality Assessment in Highly Urbanized Regions,” led by Prof. Zherong Wu and jointly conducted with Prof. Qingyu Li's team at CUHK-Shenzhen, has been selected for funding under the 1+1+1 Joint Collaboration Fund – General R&D Project, which supports high-quality collaborative research between CUHK and CUHK-Shenzhen.
The project “Physics-Guided Multi-Source Remote Sensing for High-Resolution Aboveground Biomass Estimation in Tropical and Subtropical Forests” has been awarded funding under the CUHK Direct Grant (DG) for Research 2025-26. Our PhD student, Qianxin Wang (Co-I), played a leading role in proposal development and research design.
The project “AI-Enhanced InSAR Data Processing Software for Urban Health Monitoring (eSat)” received the Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury (the exhibition’s highest honor), while “AI Large Language Model-Powered CUHK Remote Sensing Satellite System for Near-Real-Time Disaster Monitoring” was awarded a Gold Medal.
We are pleased to welcome Du Ming and Wu Bizheng to the lab through the CDMP Student Research and Innovation Scheme (CRIS). They will contribute to the project “Integrating Satellite Observations and AI to Improve Terrestrial Carbon Sink Projections in the Greater Bay Area,” gaining hands-on research experience in satellite remote sensing, artificial intelligence, and carbon cycle science.
The project “From Aerospace to Classroom: An AI-Powered Immersive Teaching and Learning Platform Based on CUHK Satellites for Cross-Disciplinary Education,” led by Prof. Zherong Wu (PI), has been awarded the Teaching Development and Language Enhancement Grant (TDLEG) 2025–28, with a total funding of HK$1,098,130.
Congratulations to Youran Fu, an MPhil student in our lab, for winning the Best Presentation Award at the ISPRS–ISDE 2025 Joint Conference in Nairobi, Kenya. His presentation, “Mamba-LCD: Urban Change Detection in Low-Light Remote Sensing Images,” was recognized for its technical innovation and impact on urban environmental monitoring.
Prof. Zherong Wu was invited as a guest speaker to the report launch “Soaring to Space: Industrial Opportunities for Hong Kong’s New Space Economy,” organized by the Federation of Hong Kong Industries (FHKI). She participated in a high-level panel discussion on the role of universities in developing Hong Kong’s new space economy.
Dr. Zherong Wu has been invited to represent Cornell University at the Global Young Scientists Summit (GYSS) 2025, an elite gathering of 340 young scientists nominated by 93 top institutions worldwide. Organized by the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF), GYSS 2025 features 18 eminent scientists, including Nobel Laureates, Fields Medalists, and Turing Award winners.
Dr. Zherong Wu has been awarded the prestigious Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship in September 2024. As part of Schmidt Sciences, this program aims to accelerate the next scientific revolution by applying AI to research in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The Fellowship program supports 160 postdoctoral Fellows around the world each year. Successful candidates must exhibit excellence in their scientific domain and show evidence of strong quantitative skills.
Our recent paper, published in Remote Sensing of Environment, on subsidence spatial pattern detection has been recognized as an ESI Highly Cited Paper. Multi-temporal InSAR is an effective tool for measuring large-scale land subsidence. However, the measurement points generated by InSAR are too many to be manually analyzed, and automatic subsidence detection and classification methods are still lacking. In this study, we developed an oriented R-CNN deep learning network to automatically detect and classify subsidence bowls using InSAR measurements and multi-source ancillary data.
Dr. Zherong Wu has been awarded the 1st Place Excellent PhD Dissertation Award by the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) Hong Kong Chapter. Her thesis, “Detecting the Spatiotemporal Pattern of Land Subsidence Using InSAR and Deep Learning”, was recognized for its innovative methodologies, scientific significance, and real-world applications.
Zherong Wu won 1st Place in the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Remote Sensing Specialty Group (RSSG) Students Honors Paper Competition. Winners were selected by the RSSG Judges Committee on the contribution to the field of remote sensing, originality, research design, and the overall quality of the paper and presentation quality. This marks the first time a CUHK student has received this prestigious award.
