Rengmao Wu earned his Bachelor’s degree from Shandong University, China, his Master’s degree from Shanghai University, China, and Ph.D. from Zhejiang University. He did postdoctoral research at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain, and the University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences, USA. In 2016, he returned to China as a Professor in the College of Optical Sciences and Engineering at Zhejiang University.

Wu has made significant contributions to freeform optics. In early 2013, when still a Ph.D. student at Zhejiang University, he invented the Monge–Ampère (MA) equation method, allowing the design of smooth freeform surfaces based on ideal-source assumption. He has also made contributions to the design for freeform imaging optics, developing an algorithm for designing freeform imaging optics with B-spline surfaces and exploring its applications in Augmented Reality.

He has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and is active in the optics community, serving on a number of conference and program committees. In 2019, he received the DAMO Academy Young Fellow Award. He a senior member of OSA. In 2021, he received OSA's Kevin P. Thompson Optical Design Innovator Award "for achievements in theory and computational methods for freeform illumination optics."