intro.qmd

# Personal Introduction {.unnumbered}

Hi, welcome to my CASA0023 Learning Diary. I'll be using this website built with [Quarto](https://quarto.org/) as my major recording system for weekly practicals and writings. This could not be possible without our amazing lecturer [Dr. Maclachlan](https://github.com/andrewmaclachlan), our awesome PGTAs (Postgraduate Teaching Assisstants) and additional GEE support (and cool GEE app demos) from [Dr. Ballinger](https://oballinger.github.io/).

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.

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<img src="images/intro/personal_intro.png" alt="NDVI for Bristol" height="290" width="320px"/>

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

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<img src="images/intro/cr_portable_01.png" alt="SAVI for Bristol" height="290" width="220px"/>

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

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