About Me - an AI4Geoscience PhD Student
Welcome to my personal academic website. Hey there! 欢迎来到这儿，很高兴认识你！ I’m Koutian “KT” Wu (吴叩天), a Proud Longhorn at UT Austin since 2024. I’m an AI4Geoscience PhD student at UT Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences, focusing on applying explainable machine learning to improve physics‑based land surface models, especially Noah‑MP. I hold a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Geological and Earth Sciences from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC).
Research Interests
My research centers on:
- AI for Land Surface Modeling: Implementing explainable AI/ML to improve physics-based Noah-MP land surface modeling
- Plant-Rock-Water Interactions: Developing models for rock and wood moisture in land surface systems
- High Performance Computing: Utilizing GPU and CPU clusters for large-scale geoscience simulations
- Model Optimization: Physics-based land surface models including Noah-MP, CTSM, and HRLDAS
Current Work
I am currently working as a Graduate Research Assistant at UT Austin and Project Admin for NCAR/CISL Allocation Project UTAA0012, “Explainable AI for Improving Physics-Based Noah-MP Land Surface Modeling of Plant–Rock–Water Interactions.” This project is funded with significant computational resources including 1,000 GPU hours on NSF NCAR Derecho-GPU and 20,000 CPU core-hours.
Recent Experience
- Graduate Research Assistant - Jackson School of Geosciences, UT Austin (Aug 2025 - Present)
- Project Admin - NSF NCAR (Aug 2025 - Present)
- AI Agent Evaluation Engineer Intern - PineAI (Jul 2025)
- Full-Stack LLM Developer Intern - Beijing ZaiwenAI Technology Co., Ltd. (Jun 2025 - Jul 2025)
- Graduate Teaching Assistant - UT Austin (Aug 2024 - May 2025)
- Visiting Scholar - NSF NCAR (Jul 2023 - Dec 2023)
Education
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Geological and Earth Sciences/Geosciences The University of Texas at Austin (Aug 2024 - May 2029) Focus: Model Optimization of Physics-based Land Surface Models (Noah-MP, CTSM, HRLDAS)
Bachelor of Science - BS (with Honors), Geological and Earth Sciences/Geosciences University of Science and Technology of China (Sep 2020 - Jul 2024) Founding President, USTC Student Xingyun Poetry Club (Currently 1,197+ members)
Skills & Technologies
- Programming: Python, MATLAB, Fortran, Shell Scripting, Perl, HTML, JavaScript
- AI/ML: Machine Learning, LLM APIs, Prompt Engineering, AI Agent Evaluation
- Frameworks: FastAPI, Celery, Redis, Vue.js
- Geoscience: Land Surface Model Development, Model Evaluation, High Performance Computing (HPC)
- Research: Quantitative Data Analysis, Scientific Communications, Academic Writing, LaTeX
Leadership & Community
Former President & Founder of USTC Student Xingyun Poetry Club (2020-2022), where I led the establishment of USTC’s first poetry club, growing it to over 1,000 members and organizing 25+ cultural events. At age 17, I was the second youngest student club president in USTC history.
Contact
I’m always interested in discussing research collaborations, academic opportunities, and AI applications in geoscience. Feel free to reach out through the contact information provided in the sidebar.
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