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About

Hi! I am Vivian Wong, a Ph.D. student in the Stanford University Civil Engineering department, where I was fortunate to be advised by Prof. Kincho Law. I am affiliated with the Engineering Informatics Group and the Stanford Center at the Incheon Global Campus. I completed my M.S. from Stanford University from 2017-2019 and my B.S. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2014-2017. My hometown is the lovely city of Toronto, Canada, and I also spent a delightful amount of my childhood in the cities of Hong Kong and Beijing.

I am broadly interested in identifying and addressing real-world motivated problems to assist in the design and management of our modern urban environments. My projects typically involve some combination of machine learning, problem formulation inspired by practical concerns, and systems implementation. Specifically, my doctoral research encompasses two key areas: 1) Using spatiotemporal data to understand human behaviour and mobility in urban systems; 2) Modern data science applications to introduce more automation in manufacturing operations. I am also passionate about STEM education, diversity, and outreach. See here for more details.

In August 2024, I'll be joining the University of Florida as an Assistant Professor in AI for the School of Design, Construction and Planning. I will be jointly appointed by the Department of Urban Regional Planning (50%) and the Rinker School of Construction Management(50%). My research group has 1-2 PhD openings starting Fall 2024 or Spring 2025 with a focus on applied AI/ML research in the domain of urban societal systems. For a brief description of my research, see above - you can also read my Research Statement. Please see here for more details on the positions and how to reach out.

Credit of the photo goes to Fangze Liu. Credit of the artwork goes to Professor Milene Goncalves.

Opportunities

My research group has 1-2 PhD openings starting Fall 2024 or Spring 2025 with a focus on applied AI/ML research in the domain of urban societal systems. For a brief description of my research, see above - you can also read my Research Statement.

Students will receive full tuition waiver and stipends in the amount outlined by UF throughout the entire duration of the studies (~4 years). The PhD degree is a STEM designated degree in either URP or CM, and the research is expected to be a part of UF's larger AI initiative.I also encourage students to pursue a PhD minor or another MS degree in CS/stats/EE, as well as summer internships in the industry, throughout the duration of the PhD. Since we're past the DCP PhD application deadline already, if you are interested in joining my group, please fill out this Google form. In the form you will be asked to provide your CV and to answer 3 questions briefly. We'll be in touch about the next steps if we're a good fit! Students should meet UF DCP PhD admission requirements, and have strong math/stats/programming background and passion for applied AI/ML/DL research.

Why University of Florida? Top 30 university in the US (USNews 2024); University-wide AI initiative with a $70 million partnership with NVIDIA - provides HiperGator access for computing needs and collaborative research environment with AI faculties; Location-wise, Gainesville is just ~100 minutes from Disney, Universal, springs and white sandy beaches and Florida weather is (I'm guessing) also nice!

For UF undergraduate/MS/rotating PhD students interested in conducting research in our group, please reach me directly by email to discuss mutual interest (vwwong3-at-stanford-dot-edu). Please attach your CV/resume and include your interests with the subject "Prospective UF Student Researcher”.

Publications

2023

V. W. H. Wong, S. H. Kim, J. Park, J. Park and K. H. Law, "Generating Dispatching Rules for the Interrupting Swap-Allowed Blocking Job Shop Problem Using Graph Neural Network and Reinforcement Learning", ASME Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering, Jan 2024; 146(1): 011009, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4063652

M. M. Sato, V. W. H. Wong, K. H. Law, H. Yeung, and P. Witherell, "Explainability of Laser Powder Bed Fusion Melt Pool Classification Using Deep Learning", International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, Boston, MA, Aug. 20-23, 2023.

V. W. H. Wong and K. H. Law, Modeling Crowd Data and Spatial Connectivity as Graphs for Crowd Flow Forecasting in Public Urban Space. ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering (i3CE), Corvallis, OR, June 25-28, 2023. https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/9780784485248.025

V. W. H. Wong, S. H. Kim, J. Park, J. Park and K. H. Law, "Generating Dispatching Rules for the Interrupting Swap-Allowed Blocking Job Shop Problem Using Graph Neural Network and Reinforcement Learning", Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (MSEC), New Brunswick, NJ, June 12-16, 2023.

V. W. H. Wong and K. H. Law, Fusion of CCTV Video and Spatial Information for Automated Crowd Congestion Monitoring in Public Urban Spaces. Algorithms, Mar 2023, 16(3):154. https://doi.org/10.3390/a16030154.

2022

M. M. Sato, V. W. H. Wong, K. H. Law, H. Yeung, Z. Yang, B. Lane and P. Witherell, "Anomaly Detection of Laser Powder Bed Fusion Melt Pool Images Using Combined Unsupervised and Supervised Learning Methods", International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, St. Louis, MO, Aug. 14-17 2022.

V. W. H. Wong, M. Ferguson, K. H. Law, Y. T. Lee and P. Witherell, "Segmentation of Additive Manufacturing Defects Using U-Net", ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering. June 2022; 22(3): 031005. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4053078

2021

V. W. H. Wong, M. Ferguson, K. H. Law, Y. T. Lee and P. Witherell, "Segmentation of Additive Manufacturing Defects Using U-Net", 41th Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (CIE). August 17-20, 2021.

2020

V. W. H. Wong, M. Ferguson, K. H. Law, Y. T. Lee and P. Witherell, "Automatic Volumetric Segmentation of Additive Manufacturing Defects with 3D U-Net", AAAI 2020 Spring Symposia, Stanford, CA, USA, Mar 23-25, 2020

2019

V. W. H. Wong, M. Ferguson, K. H. Law and Y. T. Lee, "An Assistive Learning Workflow on Annotating Images for Object Detection", 2019 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (IEEE BigData 2019), Los Angeles, CA, USA, Dec 9-12, 2019

Working

Teaching and Service

Journal Reviewer: IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning System, Optimization Letters, Automation in Construction Conference Reviewer: IEEE Big Data Conference 2019

Awards and Scholarships

Outreach

My father's side of the family were Cambodian refugees. Their escape from the turbulent era of the Cambodian civil war taught me the values of perseverance, dedication, and resilience. These lessons have profoundly influenced my worldview and drive my work not just for diversity, equity, and inclusion, but also for social and environmental justice more broadly. I am fortunate to have participated in many awesome groups: