Xiaolei (Alex) Chu

About Me

Actively exploring internship, part-time, and full-time (expected graduation time is January/June 2027) opportunities as a Research Scientist or Machine Learning Engineer in tech. Let’s connect!

I’m a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, working with Prof. Ziqi Wang. My research interests include AI, scientific machine learning, and uncertainty quantification (surrogate model and advanced sampling techniques). I also developed a systematic approach to understanding community resilience from a statistical physics perspective (e.g., renormalization group and mean-field theory). My research topics also include Bayesian system identification and hurricane simulation.

Before joining Berkeley, I completed my master’s degree at Tongji University, advised by Prof. Yaojun Ge and Prof. Wei Cui. I got my bachelor’s degree from Southwest Jiaotong University.

Outside academia, I like road trips, swimming, hiking, skiing, running, and exploring different restaurants.

Current topics

In the spring of 2025, I am working on scientific machine learning methods for spatial-temporal problems. I will join the Scientific Data Division of the Berkeley Lab as a Ph.D. research intern and work with Prof. Michael Mahoney in the 2025 summer.

Previous topics

In the summer and fall of 2024, I worked on understanding the community’s psychological polarization during hazards. We employed a bottom-up method and constructed the system Hamiltonian. Traditional techniques from statistical physics, such as mean-field theory and the renormalization group, have been widely used to infer macroscopic collective phenomena directly from microscopic interactions. The paper is coming out soon.

Research Interests

• Scientific Machine Learning: spatial-temporal problems, like PDE
• Statistical Physics: mean field theory, renormalization group, equilibrium, non-equilibrium
• Community Resilience: human-centric analysis, adaptation considering climate change
• Large Language Model: sentiment analysis (BERT, etc.)
• Uncertainty Quantification: Monte Carlo simulation, surrogate model
• Bayesian system identification: emphasis is on structural health monitoring
• Hurricane simulation: Vickery’s empirical full-track model

Awards

• [May. 2025] 2nd Place of Objective Resilience Student Paper/Presentation Competition at EMI 2025, Anaheim, CA, USA
• [Aug. 2024] The Professor Alex & Georgia Scordelis Fellowship in Structural Engineering at UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
• [Oct. 2022] Excellent Master’s Thesis at Tongji University, Shanghai, China
• [Jun. 2022] Excellent Graduate of Tongji University, Shanghai, China
• [Oct. 2021] China National Scholarship, Shanghai, China
• [Aug. 2019] Citation for Outstanding College Graduate (summa cum laude), China Civil Engineering Society, Shanghai, China
• [Jun. 2019] Excellent Undergraduate of Sichuan Province, Chengdu, China
• [Jan. 2019] 1st International Engineering Mechanics Competition: 1st prize for individual competition and 2nd prize for team competition, Nanjing, China
• [Apr. 2018] ASCE Steel Bridge Competition: 5th Overall and Best Display Medal (as the group leader), Sacramento, CA, USA
• [Oct. 2017] 1st prize in the 9th Chinese Mathematics Competition (CMC), Chengdu, China
• [Jul. 2017] 1st prize in the 11th Zhou Peiyuan National Mechanics Competition, Chengdu, China
• [Oct. 2016] 1st prize in the 8th Chinese Mathematics Competition (CMC), Chengdu, China
• [Sep. 2016-2018] Railway Alumni Scholarship, Chengdu, China

Publications and Projects

Services

Journal Reviewers

• Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE
• Journal of Engineering
• Advanced Engineering Informatics
• Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing
• Engineering Structures
• Measurement
• Journal of Building Engineering

Membership & Activities

• [2016-present] Student Member of ASCE