About me

I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), advised by Professors Kaiyu Guan and Bin Peng. My research lies at the intersection of hydrology, water quality modeling, machine learning, and statistical modeling of environmental systems. I aim to develop interpretable, data-driven models to better understand and manage complex environmental processes.

I earned my M.S. degree from the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, where I was advised by Prof. Mark Borsuk. My Master’s thesis focused on the detection of aboveground storage tanks using high-resolution satellite imagery and image analysis techniques.

Prior to that, I received my B.S. in Environmental Science from Nankai University. As an undergraduate, I worked in the atmospheric chemistry group led by Prof. Guoliang Shi, where I investigated the formation and behavior of inorganic aerosols.

My research is motivated by a commitment to addressing pressing environmental and public health challenges. By leveraging advanced computational tools and interdisciplinary approaches, I strive to contribute meaningful, actionable insights to the scientific and policy communities.

Research Interests

• Water Quality Modeling: Agricultural Hydrology, Nutrient Management.
• Data Science in Ecohydrology: Differentiable Parameter Learning, Physical-Informed Machine Learning.
• Hydrology Modeling: Large Scale Water Balance Modeling.

News

• [2025/06] A proposal was approved from Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant
• [2025/05] I gave a oral presentation at Society for Freshwater Science 2025 Annual Meeting about: How Do Anthropogenic Activity and Hydrological Variability Control the Spatiotemporal Patterns of Nitrogen and Phosphorus Export in the Mississippi/Atchafalaya River Basin?
• [2024/12] I gave a poster presentation at AGU2024 Annual Meeting about: Spatio-temporal Changes and Driving Factors of Riverine Nitrogen Export in an Agriculture-dominated Watershed: the Illinois River Basin

Publications

First Author

• Zhao, Qianyu. "Aboveground Storage Tank Detection Using Faster R-CNN and High-Resolution Aerial Imagery." Master's thesis, Duke University, 2021.
• Zhao, Qianyu, Athanasios Nenes, Haofei Yu, Shaojie Song, Zhimei Xiao, Kui Chen, Guoliang Shi, Yinchang Feng, and Armistead G. Russell. "Using high-temporal-resolution ambient data to investigate gas-particle partitioning of ammonium over different seasons." Environmental science & technology 54, no. 16 (2020): 9834-9843.

Coauthor

• Zhao, Puyang, Xinhui Liu, Zhiyi Yue, Qianyu Zhao, Xinzhi Liu, Yuhui Deng, and Jingjin Wu. "DiGAN Breakthrough: Advancing diabetic data analysis with innovative GAN-based imbalance correction techniques." Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine Update 5 (2024): 100152.
• Shi, Guoliang, Jiao Xu, Xurong Shi, Baoshuang Liu, Xiaohui Bi, Zhimei Xiao, Kui Chen, Jie Wen, Shihao Dong, Yingze Tian, Yinchang Feng, Haofei Yu, Shaojie Song, Qianyu Zhao, Jie Gao, Armistead G. Russell. "Aerosol pH dynamics during haze periods in an urban environment in China: Use of detailed, hourly, speciated observations to study the role of ammonia availability and secondary aerosol formation and urban environment." Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 124, no. 16 (2019): 9730-9742.
• Shi, Xurong, Athanasios Nenes, Zhimei Xiao, Shaojie Song, Haofei Yu, Guoliang Shi, Qianyu Zhao, Kui Chen, Yinchang Feng, and Armistead G. Russell. "High-resolution data sets unravel the effects of sources and meteorological conditions on nitrate and its gas-particle partitioning." Environmental science & technology 53, no. 6 (2019): 3048-3057.
• Wang, Haiting, Jing Ding, Jiao Xu, Jie Wen, Jianhong Han, Keling Wang, Guoliang Shi, Yinchang Feng, Cesunica E. Ivey, Yuhang Wang, Athanasios Nenes, Qianyu Zhao, Armistead G. Russell. "Aerosols in an arid environment: The role of aerosol water content, particulate acidity, precursors, and relative humidity on secondary inorganic aerosols." Science of the Total Environment 646 (2019): 564-572.