Shuyu Chang

Shuyu Chang

she/her

Assistant Professor at UConn

About

As a computational hydrologist, my research seeks to better understand and predict the interactions between hydrology and biogeochemistry, guided by the overarching question: How can we strategically manage our landscapes to improve water resources in a rapidly changing world? I integrate large-scale datasets, process-based models, and AI to quantify the impacts of environmental change and human activities on water systems. My current research focuses on (1) large-scale water quality prediction, (2) data-driven understanding of river temperature regimes, and (3) watershed restoration and its impacts on hydrology and water quality.

I’m hiring! I will recruit 1–2 PhD students for Fall 2027 — please feel free to reach out!

Education & Training

  • Postdoc: Earth & Environment at Franklin & Marshall College
  • Ph.D.: Geography at Penn State University
  • M.S.E.: Water Resources Engineering at Johns Hopkins University
  • B.S.: Hydraulic Engineering at China Agricultural University

Courses

  • ERTH 2150: Programming for Earth and Environmental Science
  • ERTH 2050W: Communicating Earth and Environmental Science

Selected Publications

  • Chang, S. Y.*, Aboelyazeed, D.*, Sawadekar, K., Chavada, D., Shen, C., Van Meter, K. J. (2026). A Community Dataset for Large-Scale River Nitrogen Modeling in the United States. Scientific Data. [DOI: 10.1038/s41597-026-06873-5]
  • Chang, S. Y., Schwenk, J., Solander, K. (2025). Deep Learning Advances Arctic River Water Temperature Predictions. Water Resources Research, 61(6), e2024WR039053. [DOI: 10.1029/2024WR039053]
  • Chang, S. Y., Zhang, Q., Byrnes, D. K., Basu, N. B., & Van Meter, K. J. (2021). Chesapeake legacies: The importance of legacy nitrogen to improving Chesapeake Bay water quality. Environmental Research Letters, 16(8), 085002. [DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac0d7b]

News

[Aug 2026] I joined the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Connecticut as an assistant professor.

[Jul 2025] I joined the Department of Earth and Environment at Franklin & Marshall College as a postdoctoral scholar. Looking forward to the new chapters of research!

[Jun 2025] I defended my PhD dissertation! 🎓

[May 2025] The work I led with my mentors, Kurt and Jon, during my Applied Machine Learning Internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was accepted by Water Resources Research and is now officially published at [DOI: 10.1029/2024WR039053]. In this paper, we summarized the current gaps in Arctic river temperature predictions, presented a robust LSTM river temperature model without considering streamflow, and enhanced the interpretability of LSTM using Integrated Gradients.

[Feb 2025] I was awarded the AGU ‘24 Outstanding Student Presentation Award (OSPA).

[Feb 2025] I attended and delivered a talk at the Chesapeake Bay AI/ML Workshop at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC).

[Feb 2025] I delivered a departmental seminar to the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Penn State.

[Jan 2025] I attended and presented at the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting in New Orleans for the first time.

[Dec 2024] I went to AGU ‘24 in Washington, DC. I gave an oral presentation and a poster presentation, met old friends, and made new connections!

[Oct 2024] I visited Franklin & Marshall College and delivered a guest lecture on “Dams and Nutrients in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed” 🎓

[Oct 2024] My first-author paper “The geometry of flow: Advancing predictions of river geometry with multi-model machine learning”, accepted to Water Resources Research, is now officially published at [DOI: 10.1029/2023WR036733].

[Oct 2024] My first-author manuscript, titled “Advancing Arctic River Temperature Predictions Using a Deep Learning Approach”, is now available as a preprint at [DOI: 10.22541/au.172745845.52823366/v1].

[Jun 2024] I served as the science lead and co-organized with Dr. Kimberly Van Meter the Chesapeake Water Summer Institute at the Pennsylvania State University. This two-week summer institute has successfully concluded. Our students gave a talk at the Chesapeake Community Research Symposium ‘24, in Annapolis, MD. Thanks everyone!

[Hello World] Woo-hoo! Setting up my first personal website 🥳.