Rui is a Postdoctoral Scholar working on water resources management in the Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California, Davis. Her undergraduate studies in Hydraulic Engineering and Economics in Tsinghua University in Beijing sparked her interest in water resources. After graduating, she came to UC Davis in 2011 as a Civil and Environmental Engineering graduate student, finishing her Master’s degree in 2013 and Doctoral degree in 2014. She is interested in water resources economics, hydro-economic modeling, flood risk analysis, flood insurance, hydropower operation, reservoir operation and environmental policy, using various analytical and numerical methods to solve the water issues. Her Master’s thesis focused on reservoir operations, and her doctoral dissertation work examines the optimal design of levee and flood control systems. She expands her interests further to water and energy related issues with her work experience in CAISO after graduation. In addition to the subjects she has been working on since graduate school, her postdoctoral researches currently also include climate change, flood insurance and pumped-storage.