Cynthia Cui now sights set on being innovator in renewable energy

 Cynthia Cui

In 2018, Cynthia Cui noticed that the peak of the flood that tore through her hometown of Fredericton, N.B., was never predicted.

The devastation left in the flood’s wake moved Cui, who was then in high school, to create a flood prediction model that would better prepare authorities to act.

That summer, Cui, an avid chess player, took an interest in machine learning after reading about how chess engines are programmed.

Having developed an application to predict and visualize the impact of floods, Cynthia Cui now has her sights set on being an innovator in renewable energy. 

From there she created a flood prediction and visualization application that could simulate and show the user the exact impact of different water levels. She then spent six months learning how to code, collecting data and researching the cause of floods in New Brunswick.

In May of 2019, Cui presented her project at the national science fair. Representatives from insurance companies attending the fair were blown away by the potential the project had for homeowners and insurance companies to negotiate insurance prices based on her project’s predictive powers.

And while her flood application addresses the issue of climate change on a short-term basis, Cui said she aspires to find a more permanent solution as an engineer innovating in the renewable energy field.

“I chose engineering because I would like to gain a deeper understanding of the world around me and be able to use that knowledge to improve upon previous solutions or innovate new solutions to real-world problems.”