Rui Cheng

Claremont McKenna College

Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences

PI @ Environmental Sensing & Modeling Lab

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering

Affiliated with:

Minnesota Robotics Institute

Minnesota Supercomputing Institute

UMN Data Science Initiative

UMN Institute on the Environment

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Major: Environmental Science and Engineering

Minor: Electrical Engineering

Thesis Advisory Committee: Christian Frankenberg (Advisor), Tapio Schneider (Chair), Paul O. Wennberg, Anthony Bloom

Thesis: Remotely evaluating the seasonality of gross primary production at high latitudes

Flux Course

Major: Earth and Environmental Science

Advisor: Benjamin Felzer

Thesis: The associated effects of temperature and soil moisture on forest carbon fluxes in the contiguous US

Major: Atmospheric Science

Advisor: Song Yang

Thesis: Characteristics of hot days in China with Central-Pacific El Niño

• Cheng, R. (2024), Solar-Induced chlorophyll Fluorescence (SIF): Towards a Better Understanding of Vegetation Dynamics and Carbon Uptake in Arctic-Boreal Ecosystems. Current Climate Change Reports. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40641-024-00194-8

• Cheng, R., Magney, T.S., Orcutt, E.L., Pierrat, Z., Köhler, P., Bowling, D.R., Bret-Harte, M.S., Euskirchen, E.S., Jung, M., Kobayashi, H., Rocha, A.V., Sonnentag, O., Walther, S., Zona, D., Frankenberg, C. (2022), Evaluating photosynthetic activity across Arctic-Boreal land cover types using solar-induced fluorescence. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac9dae

• Byrne, B., Liu, J., Yi, Y., Chatterjee, A., Basu, S., Cheng, R., Doughty, R., Chevallier, F., Bowman, K.W., Parazoo, N. C., Crisp, D., Li, X., Xiao, J., Sitch, S., Guenet, B., Deng, F., Johnson, M. S., Philip, S., Mcguire, P. C., and Miller, C. E. (2022), Multi-year observations reveal a larger than expected autumn respiration signal across northeast Eurasia. Biogeosciences. https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-4779-2022

• Kunik, L., Raczka, B., Smith, K.R., Bowling, D., Frankenberg, C., Köhler, P., Cheng, R., Goulden, M.L., Jung, M., & Lin, J.C. (2023), Satellite-based solar-induced fluorescence tracks seasonal and elevational patterns of photosynthesis in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad07b4

• Cheng, R., Köhler, P., & Frankenberg, C. (2022), Impacts of Topography and Radiation on Temporal Upscaling of Instantaneous Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2022.109197

• Pierrat, Z.A., Magney, T.S., Cheng, R., Maguire A., Wong C., Nehemy M., Rao M.P., Nelson S.E., Williams A.F., Grosvenor J.A.H., Smith K.R., Reblin J.S., Stutz J., Richardson A., Logan B.A., Bowling D.R., (2024) The biological basis for using optical signals to track evergreen needleleaf photosynthesis. BioScience, biad116, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad116

• Cheng, R., Magney, T.S., Dutta, D., Bowling, D.R., Logan, B.A., Burns, S.P., Blanken, P.D., Grossmann, K., Lopez, S., Richardson, A.D. and Stutz, J., (2020). Decomposing reflectance spectra to track gross primary production in a subalpine evergreen forest. Biogeosciences, 17(18), pp.4523-4544. https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-17-4523-2020

• Magney, T.S., Bowling, D.R., Logan, B.A., Grossmann, K., Stutz, J., Blanken, P.D., Burns, S.P., Cheng, R., Garcia, M.A., Kӧhler, P. and Lopez, S., (2019). Mechanistic evidence for tracking the seasonality of photosynthesis with solar-induced fluorescence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(24), pp.11640-11645. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1900278116

• Seyednasrollah, B., Bowling, D.R., Cheng, R., Logan, B.A., Magney, T.S., Frankenberg, C., Yang, J.C., Young, A.M., Hufkens, K., Arain, M.A. and Black, T.A., (2020). Seasonal variation in the canopy color of temperate evergreen conifer forests. New Phytologist. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.17046

• Cheng, R., Novak, L., & Schneider, T., 2021. Predicting the interannual variability of California’s total annual precipitation. Geophysical Research Letters, 48, e2020GL091465. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL091465

• Huang, J., … Cheng, R., … Fisher. J.B., (2025), Remotely sensed high‐resolution soil moisture and evapotranspiration: Bridging the gap between science and society. Water Resources Research. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR037929

• Felzer, B.S., Ember, C.R., Cheng, R. and Jiang, M., 2020. The Relationships of Extreme Precipitation and Temperature Events with Ethnographic Reports of Droughts and Floods in Nonindustrial Societies. Weather, Climate, and Society, 12(1), pp.135-148. https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-19-0045.1

• Zhang, D., Qiu, G., Gao, Y., Fang, X., Cheng, R., Chang, A. and Chan, C.Y., 2014, October. Crowdsourcing based radio map anomalous event detection system for calibration-on-demand. In 2014 International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN) (pp. 220-229). IEEE.

SCI 030LB - Integrated Sciences I-B

Instructor, Claremont McKenna College

BBE 4753/5753 - Air Quality and Pollution Control Engineering

Instructor, University of Minnesoa

BBE 2003 - Computer Applications in Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering

Instructor, University of Minnesoa

1.S991: Sensing and Intelligent Systems

Instructor, MIT

TREX: Vegetation and Remote Sensing on the Island of Hawai’i

TA for Prof. David Des Marais, MIT

(Q)GIS Tutorial for Drone and Satellite Images

Instructor, MIT

GE 157c: Remote Sensing for Environmental and Geological Applications

TA for Prof. Bethany Elmann, Caltech

ESE 103: Earth’s Biogeochemical Cycles

TA for Prof. Christian Frankenberg, Caltech

ESE 131a: Physical Oceanography I

TA for Prof. Jörn Callies, Caltech

ESE 101: Earth’s Atmosphere

TA for Prof. Tapio Schneider, Caltech

Data and Coding Instructor at the Carpentries, Caltech

Teacher Development Program (I+II), Lehigh University

Environmental Research Letters; Remote Sensing of Environment; Agricultural and Forest Meteorology; Biogeosciences; ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Nexus; Environmental Research Communications; European Journal of Remote Sensing; Geocarto International; Science of the Total Environment; Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment;

Environmental Research - Ecology

NASA, EPA, DOE

Ameriflux Year of Remote Sensing Organizing Committee, present

NEON Advisory Groups (Foliar Sampling), present

AGU Biogeoscience DEI Committee & Graduate Travel Fund Committee, present

Caltech Resident Associate, 2019-2022

Science Outreach at Kona Science Coffee and Kealakehe High School, Jan 2023

Science Outreach at 29 Palms, AGU Voices for Science Program, 2021-2022

Caltech Women in Geoscience Club & Caltech Women Mentor Women, 2017-2022

Mentor & Judge in SoCal Science Olympiad (high school), 2018

Science Outreach at the Washington STEAM Multilingual Academy, Pasadena, CA, 2018

Science Tutor for underrepresented students at Donegan Elementary School, Bethlehem, PA, 2016-2017

Science Tutor for students with disabilities, China, 2012-2014