The Fellows at the Spatial Data Lab (SDL) are an integral part of our ongoing mission to advance spatial data science and GeoAI research. These fellows are actively engaged in high-impact projects that span various domains, such as public health, environmental sustainability, remote sensing, and urban analytics. Working alongside Core Fellows, SDL staff, and global collaborators, Current Fellows are involved in every stage of research, from data collection and analysis to the development of new geospatial tools and workflows.
Mengxi Zhang
Affiliation: Assistant Professor, Carilion School of Medicine at Virginia Tech
Mengxi Zhang, Ph.D., MPH, is an Assistant Professor, Carilion School of Medicine at Virginia Tech. She graduated from Tulane University with her Ph.D. in International Health and Development and Master Degree in Epidemiology. Prior to Tulane, she majored in Preventive Medicine in Capital Medical University. Her research focuses mainly on the well-being of immigrants and displaced persons, disparities in health and healthcare resources among underrepresented populations, and the effectiveness of human mobility on the changes of health status.
Siqin (Sisi) Wang
Affiliation: Associate Professor (Teaching) of Spatial Sciences,USC Dornsife
Siqin (Sisi) Wang, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor (Teaching) of Spatial Sciences with the Spatial Sciences Institute in the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California.Dr. Wang’s research interests are in GIScience, spatiotemporal big data analytics, computational social science, digital health geography, human-centered GeoAI, human mobility and migration, smart cities and human-climate interactions and she publishes extensively in these areas.She was named one of 50 Rising Stars by Geospatial World in 2024. Her co-first author 2021 paper on human mobility and COVID-19 transmission received the 2022 Best Paper Award and Most Downloaded Paper from the Annals of GIS in 2023.Her professional roles include service as the Associated Chair for the Spatial Data Lab affiliated with Harvard University and as Vice Chair of the Young Scientist Innovation Network for Digital Earth of the International Society for Digital Earth.Prior to joining the USC Spatial Sciences Institute, Dr. Wang was an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia, and an Honorary Lecturer/Research Fellow with the University of Queensland, Australia. From April 2022 to July 2023, she also was a JSPS Research Fellow with the University of Tokyo, Japan, researching healthcare access and social vulnerability in the post-COVID Japan.
Xiao Huang
Affiliation: Assistant Professor , Emory University
Dr. Huang’s research primarily focuses on human-environment interaction, computational social sciences, vulnerability and resilience, urban informatics, disaster mapping and mitigation, GeoAI and deep learning, and disaster remote sensing. Different from traditional geospatial analysis, his research takes advantage of rapidly growing data availability through the utilization of emerging, innovative data sources and the development of advanced geospatial analytical techniques to address existing/future challenges in disaster studies (e.g., real-time monitoring, assessment, and mitigation) and human society (e.g., human behaviors, vulnerability, and inequity) from Big Data and spatiotemporal perspectives. He built an academic career integrating his research and wide‐reaching public service while engaging with communities, particularly socially disadvantaged communities.
Lingbo Liu
Affiliation: Research Associate, Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University
Lingbo leads the Spatial Data Lab project at the CGA, focusing on the development of advanced geospatial models and an open-source visual programming platform for GeoAI research, as well as training programs to democratize geospatial data science. His research focuses on the study of healthy cities, utilizing advanced geospatial AI models to capture the spatiotemporal features of urban systems. He aims to parse the coupling mechanisms of the space-human system to provide decision support for public policy to make cities healthier.
Devika Jain
Affiliation: GIS Data Science Project Manager, Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University
Devika Jain is a Project Manager at CGA where she leads the area of Geospatial Data Science and Big Data. She has more than a decade of experience in Geoinformation Science and has been instrumental in building several high-impact geospatial platform. She has keen interest in advanced Geospatial research and serves in the UCGIS research commitee. Her research areas include Geospatial Data Science, Big Data, High-Performance Computing, Machine Learning and GeoAI. Before joining CGA in 2017, she worked as a researcher with Fraunhofer IIS, German Research Foundation (DFG) and London School of Economics. She holds a master in Geodesy and Geoinformation Science from Technical University Berlin, Germany and a bachelors in Civil Engineering from HBTI, India.
Yongze Song
Affiliation: Senior Lecturer, Curtin University, Australia
Yongze Song is a Senior Lecturer at Curtin University. He is a Royal Geographical Society (RGS) Fellow, UK, DAAD AInet Fellow, Germany, and a Committee Member of the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences (IAMG). Yongze leads a Geospatial Analysis and AI team, maintaining strong industry networks and delivering industry-driven research projects about sustainable infrastructure management using emerging technologies. He developed more than 16 new geospatial methods and 8 R software packages with over 120,000 downloads for understanding geographical and spatial data. He published 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, including 7 highly-cited papers. He is a recipient of more than ten awards at international and national levels, such as the Geospatial World 50 Rising Stars, the Global Top 10 Young Scientist Award, World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University, and the Australian National Location Data First Prize. He is an Associate Editor or Editorial Board Member of over 10 international peer-reviewed journals, including International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, GIScience & Remote Sensing, iScience (Cell Press), Geoscientific Model Development, All Earth, Journal of Spatial Science, International Journal of Digital Earth, Remote Sensing, Geo-spatial Information Science, Annals of GIS, etc. He serves as a Chair or Program Committee Member for international conferences held in Australia, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Norway, China, France, the United States, Canada, Iran, Vanuatu, and Greece. He serves 50 peer-reviewed journals as a reviewer. He was invited to present more than 60 research seminars at universities and industries globally.
Yanqing Xu
Affiliation:Professor, Wuhan University
She is a Professor at the School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, with a Ph.D. in Geography from Louisiana State University. Her primary research interests focus on integrating GIScience, public health, and crime geography. She aims to apply remote sensing technologies to analyze urban environments, concentrating on public health impacts and crime prevention strategies. During this experience, she expects to work on projects such as evaluating urban surveillance systems, assessing environmental exposure impacts on health, and using spatial data to enhance public safety.
Abhishek Behl
Affiliation: Associate Professor,Keele Business School; Keele University, UK
Abhishek Behl is an Associate Professor at Keele Business School, Keele University, UK. He has earned his second Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, where his research is in crowdfunding and gamification. He is a winner of the prestigious “Naik and Rastogi Award for excellence in PhD” from IIT Bombay. He holds a rich experience of teaching, research and consultancy. He has taught subjects like Marketing Analytics; Gamification for Business; Spatial Data Computing for Sports and Games; Qualitative Data Analytics. His research is in the area of gamification, stakeholder engagement and business intelligence. He is the president of Special Interest Group (SIG)- GAME of Association for Information Systems. He is an AE of Journal of Global Information Management; Technology Forecasting and Social Change and Journal of Information Technology Case and Application Research. He has published more than 150 research papers in top tier journals of international repute.
Xiran Zhou
Affiliation: Associate Professor, China University of Mining and Technology
Xiran Zhou is currently an associate professor at China University of Mining and Technology (CUMT). He was awarded Jiangsu Provincial Double-Innovation and Excellent Young Teachers in CUMT. He is also an affiliated professor of Ningxia University. He received his master degree from the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping, and Remote Sensing (LIESMARS), Wuhan University, and his PhD degree from Arizona State University. His research interests include geospatial pattern recognition, multi-modal earth observation data fusion and interpretation, and water sustainable development with earth observation datasets.
Prafulla Parlewar
Affiliation: Professor of Urban Planning, School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), New Delhi, India
He is graduated from Chiba University, Japan in Urban Planning (2004-07). He did Masters is Planning with specialization in Urban Planning from School of Planning (SPA), New Delhi (1997-99) and B. Arch. from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT), Nagpur (1991-97). He has experiences of Urban Planning in USA, Japan, UK, Mexico, Vietnam, South Korea, India, Morocco, Slovenia, France and Myanmar.
Abolghasem Sadeghi-Niaraki
Affiliation: Associate Professor, eXtended Reality (XR) Research Center, Sejong University, South Korea.
Abolghasem Sadeghi-Niaraki (Member, IEEE) is an internationally recognized expert in Geo-AI, XR technologies, and spatial data science. He currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering and as a core member of the eXtended Reality (XR) Metaverse Research Center at Sejong University, Republic of Korea. Previously, he held the position of Assistant Professor at the Geo-Informatics Engineering Dept. at INHA University, South Korea. He earned his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Geomatics and GIS Engineering from K. N. Toosi University of Technology (KNTU) and completed his Ph.D. in Geo-Informatics Engineering at INHA University. He has extensive teaching and research experience at several universities, including Sejong University, Inha University, and KNTU. With over 200 peer-reviewed publications, 22+ patents, and recognition as a Top 2% Scientist worldwide (Stanford–Elsevier, 2024), his research encompasses Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (Geo-AI), XR (VR/AR/MR), Metaverse, Ubiquitous GIS, IoT, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and Culture Technology (CT). He has also played a strategic role in the creation of multiple international centers and dual-degree programs in collaboration with KAIST and ETRI. His interdisciplinary approach, combining technological innovation with human-centered design, has earned him prestigious honors, including the Australian Endeavour Research Fellowship (The University of Melbourne) and multiple national and ministerial awards.
Guy Keren
Affiliation: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Guy Keren is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, focusing on developing methods for analysing spatial data. His research addresses data scarcity challenges in geospatial research by leveraging Conditioned Generative Adversarial Networks (cGANs) to disaggregate data and generate synthetic data in the domains of precipitation and geo-demographics. Guy’s proficiency in geospatial data science is complemented by his skills in various Geographic Information Systems like ArcGIS, QGIS, ENVI as well as Python and SQL. He holds a Master of Arts in Geography with a specialization in Urban and Regional Planning from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Junior Fellow
Chuan Chen
Affiliation: Technical University of Munich
Chuan Chen holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing from Wuhan University (2015-2019) and a Master of Science in Geodesy and Geoinformation from the Technical University of Munich (2019-2022). Currently, they are pursuing a PhD in Cartography and Visual Analytics at the Technical University of Munich, a journey that began in July 2022. He is currently focused on research in knowledge graphs, Responsible GeoAI, and Visual Explainable GeoAI.
Gladys Elizabeth Kenyon
Affiliation: University of Liverpool
Gladys is a social geographer and geographic data scientist interested in the study of socio-economic inequalities. She has a BA in Human Geography and an MSc in Geographic Data Science, and is currently a PhD candidate based in the Geographic Data Science Lab, University of Liverpool. Her research uses new forms of data (satellite imagery and housing listings data) to study spatio-temporal changes to the housing market in Madrid.