Directory profile for Dr. Runlong Yu

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Alabama. Before joining UA, I was a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Pittsburgh. I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2023, following a B.Eng. in Computer Science from USTC in 2017. My research focuses on advancing artificial intelligence, data science, and scientific machine learning for real-world problems with broad societal and scientific impact. I work at the intersection of machine learning, geospatial intelligence, computer vision, and AI for Science, with particular interests in generative AI, foundation models, physics-guided learning, neural operators, and knowledge-augmented reasoning. My recent work explores diffusion models and flow matching for scientific data generation, reconstruction, and forecasting, as well as neural-operator-based modeling of PDE-constrained physical systems. These efforts are motivated by challenging problems in Earth and environmental systems, including hydrology, aquatic and freshwater systems, wildfire science, climate and agriculture, remote sensing, land surface temperature reconstruction, and environmental extremes, as well as turbulence and flow simulation more broadly. At UA, I lead the AI for Science Lab, where we develop algorithms and platforms for interdisciplinary scientific discovery. Our lab welcomes collaborators interested in AI for Science, generative modeling, remote sensing, physics-guided machine learning, and data-driven understanding of complex physical systems.