Hu teaches world history and East Asian history, and his research focuses on Confucian education and social transformation in the middle period of China (800-1300). Dr. Hu collected records from over five hundred gazetteers to analyze school construction, administrative policies, economic resources and regional variations. These primary sources helped document his finding that the Confucian education in this period was the first universal male educational system in world history. In addition to his disciplined research as a historian, Dr. Hu also has diverse academic interests in computer science and space physics.