Student Success Story: Qingyun Pu

Congratulations to CIVS RA Qingyun Pu, who will receive her MSCS degree (thesis option) in December 2025. She successfully defended her thesis, “Human-In-The-Loop Digital Twins for Industrial Safety and Process Understanding: Integrating Visual Analytics, Immersive Training, and LLM-Based Incident Structuring.”

Digital twins have become essential for understanding and optimizing complex industrial processes. This thesis presents a human-in-the-loop digital twin framework that links process data, human interaction, and structured feedback to enhance industrial safety and process comprehension. At its core, the framework introduces a continuous casting digital twin system that transforms multi-parameter data into interactive 2D and 3D visual analytics.

The mentors at CIVS are not only outstanding educators, but also incredibly approachable and supportive in both academic and personal growth.

Qingyun Pu

Developed and validated using datasets from steel companies, it enables engineers to explore temperature fields, solidification behavior, and phase boundaries through intuitive visualization and parameter-driven interfaces. Building upon this analytical foundation, the Hazard360 training system extends digital twins into immersive learning environments, where users identify hazards in 360° factory scenes for experiential safety training. To complete the feedback cycle, a large language model–based module structures unorganized textual reports into machine-readable safety knowledge.

Together, these components establish a scalable, human-centered digital twin ecosystem that bridges computational modeling, human cognition, and feedback intelligence. Evaluations of visualization fidelity, user engagement, and knowledge extraction demonstrate its potential to transform digital twins from static monitoring tools into dynamic, learning-oriented systems for safer and smarter industrial operations.

“Through frequent meetings with professionals from the steel industry, discussing real requirements and translating them into technical solutions, I gained invaluable hands-on experience. This project-oriented RA environment accelerated my growth significantly and equipped me with strong technical and communication skills, which later became essential when pursuing internships and full-time roles.” said Pu. “Beyond research and work, CIVS has also provided a warm and supportive community. As an international student studying far from home, the activities, mentorship, and encouragement I received at CIVS meant a great deal to me. The mentors at CIVS are not only outstanding educators, but also incredibly approachable and supportive in both academic and personal growth. I truly enjoyed and deeply appreciate my time at CIVS.”

After graduation, she has accepted a position at Amazon.