Wu elected fellow of ASCE

By Peter Murphy

“For me, this distinction is especially meaningful because it reflects the collective efforts of the many students, collaborators and colleagues I have worked with over the years,” Wu said. “It also highlights the growing importance of wind engineering and climate resilience in creating safer and more sustainable communities.”

Wu is a wind engineering expert and was recently recognized by ASCE for his work on performance-based wind engineering and infrastructure resilience with the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize and the State-of-the-Art of Civil Engineering Award. He continues to make fundamental contributions by developing analytical and computational methods for nonlinear and transient bridge aerodynamics, wind engineering, and hurricane-resilient infrastructure. His current work advances these concepts and combines them with several other disciplines, including artificial intelligence.

A significant amount of Wu’s work happens in UB’s wind tunnel, located in Ketter Hall on North Campus. He and his research team are developing what they believe will be the world’s first AI-empowered wind tunnel.

Currently, the wind speed is fixed and needs to be adjusted manually. Wu and his team are implementing powerful graphics processing units (GPU) to enable AI to make adjustments and make its behavior smarter and more flexible. According to Wu, this new addition will allow the system to mimic real storms more accurately with gusts, storm bursts and other real-world extreme wind events. 

“I’m particularly excited about harnessing artificial intelligence to fundamentally enhance the capabilities of wind tunnels,” Wu said. “This will transform the wind tunnel from a passive testing facility into an intelligent, adaptive research platform capable of reproducing realistic and complex wind environments.”

Wu is also utilizing AI to pursue the concept of digital twins for wind engineering, incorporating physical experiments with high-performance computing. Researchers can produce a seamless feedback loop between testing and simulation, with the potential to elevate wind engineering on a broad scale, according to Wu.

“I believe these technologies have the potential to redefine how we study wind effects on buildings and infrastructure and to accelerate innovation in resilient design,” Wu said.

Wu joined UB in 2014 and received his master’s degree and PhD in civil engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a master’s degree in bridge engineering from Tongji University.