Di Zhu
GIScience | GeoAI | Spatial Networks | Spatial Thinker
Assistant Professor, McKnight Land-Grant Professor
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Hi, this is Di Zhu. Welcome to my website!
I am an Assistant Professor of Geographic Information Science (GIScience) in the Department of Geography, Environment and Society (GES), University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (UMN), and the director of Geospatial Data Intelligence (GeoDI) Lab.
I have a PhD in Cartology and GIScience from Peking University (PKU), a B.S. in Geographic Information Systems, and a B.Ec. in Economics also from PKU. My research focuses on GIScience, Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI), Spatial Networks, Social Sensing, and Urban Complexities.
I am a core member at UMN Data Science and AI hub, an affiliate faculty at the Minnesota Population Center (MPC) and UMN CSE Data Science Initiatives. I am also a CTS Scholar at Center for Transportation Studies and an executive committee member of the Master of GIS (MGIS) program at UMN. I served as a Board Member at the CPGIS from 2023-2025 and am currently the Associate Editor of Computational Urban Science. Before joining UMN, I worked as a graduate research assistant at the Spatial-temporal Social Sensing (S3) Lab, PKU and a visiting lecturer at SpaceTimeLab, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geomatic Engineering, University College London (UCL).
