Personal Introduction

Hi, welcome to my CASA0023 Learning Diary. I’ll be using this website built with Quarto as my major recording system for weekly practicals and writings. This could not be possible without our amazing lecturer Dr. Maclachlan, our awesome PGTAs (Postgraduate Teaching Assisstants) and additional GEE support (and cool GEE app demos) from Dr. Ballinger.

My name is Mengyu Ding, I am an engineer by training. Graduated from University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, in 2015 with a B.Sc in Electrical Engineering. Afterwards, I have been lucky to work in the ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) industry and engineering consulting industry for many years. I’ve also got a Master of Information Technology from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, in 2019. After my first master’s degree, I have been working as a graduate engineer for John Holland Group in Melbourne for a few years and then moved back to China to join a few interesting start-ups and scale-ups as product/solutions manager in the autonomous driving (V2X side) and smart cities industry. Career-wise, I am interested in transportation and smart cities mostly. I attend UCL to gear my career towards urban mobility and smart cities. The support and learning at UCL has been quite great. (and of course, the studying is sometimes sleep-depriving too!)

Besides working, I like hiking, cooking and reading science literature or science fictions. I also enjoy building small gadgets, for example, I was into hand-made Corsi-Rosenthal boxes during 2021 and 2022.

GIS Crew and I (in the middle) Surveying Hu-Hang-Yong Highway in Zhejiang Province for Installing RSUs (Road Side Units)

My Hand-made Portable Air-Filtering System (HEPA-13 + 2 x turbo fans + Active charcoal Filter) Powered bn a Powerbank