Dr. Rui Cao is an Assistant Professor at the Thrust of Urban Governance and Design, Society Hub, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) where he leads the RUI (Responsible Urban Intelligence) Lab . He specializes in Geographic Information Science (GIScience), with a particular interest in GeoAI and Urban Informatics. His research focuses on multi-source spatiotemporal data fusion and its applications in urban sensing and analytics, aiming to advance sustainable and human-centered smart cities for societal benefit.
Dr. Cao has published extensively in leading international journals across geographic information science, computer science, and urban science, including featured and ESI highly cited articles. His work has been cited by prestigious journals such as Science, with over 1,900 citations on Google Scholar. His research has also been featured by major media outlets, including Xinhua News, China Daily, etc., reaching over one million views.
He has been awarded national and provincial talent programs and has secured research funding from both academic and industry sources. Dr. Cao serves as a reviewer for national research grants such as NSFC and BELSPO and for numerous prestigious international journals in geospatial information science, computer science, and urban science. Additionally, he contributed as conference secretary for the Global Smart Cities Summit cum The 3rd International Conference on Urban Informatics (GSCS & ICUI 2023) and a member of organization committee for the 2024 International Conference of Social Computing (ICSC 2024) .