Research Projects

Current and past research projects, funding, and collaborations

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[2025 - 2026] Partnerships for Sustainable Communities (PSC) Course Grants, Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota

Principal Investigator

Community Engagement for GEOG 3531/5531 - Principles of Spatial Analysis

[2024 - 2025] CTS Scholars Seed Research, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota

Co-Principal Investigator

Rural Mobility and Access: Leveraging Big Data Analytics and Context-Aware Computing

[2023 - 2024] DSI Medium/Large Seed Grant, Data Science Initiatives, University of Minnesota

Principal Investigator

Quantifying Carbon Emission Efficiency through the Lens of Human Mobility

[2023 – 2024] Seed Grants for Social Sciences Research, OFAA, College of Liberal Arts

Principal Investigator

A GeoAI-based Model for Human Mobility Flow Generation

[2022 -2023] FIRP, Center for Urban & Regional Affairs (1801-10964-21584-5672018)

Principal Investigator

Sensing Geospatial Communities in Mobility Networks: How Human Movements Drive Dynamic Community Structures within the Twin Cities Metro Area

Detect geospatial boundaries of communities, describe dynamic community profiles, and identify key transitions within our community structure during the COVID-19 pandemic within the Twin Cities Metro Area.

[2021 - present] Start-up Funding for New Faculty at University of Minnesota (1000-10964-20042-5672018)

Principal Investigator

Intelligent Spatial Models and Analytical Methods

Explore the frontier of Geospatial Artificial Intelligence, and bridge the methodological linkage between deep/machine learning models and spatial analytical models with a focus on human-environment complexities within socioeconomic and population data.

[2020 - present] National Spatiotemporal Population Research Infrastructure (2R01HD057929-11)

Collaborator

National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Collaboration with Minnesota Population Center

[2019 - 2021] The Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 41830645)

Senior Investigator

Theoretical and analytical methods of spatial interaction networks in geospatial big data

Investigate systematic methods for analyzing multi-modal spatial networks at different spatio-temporal scales. Develop a WebGIS platform and apply to: city (Shenzhen), megalopolis (Guangdong-Hong Kong- Macau Big Bay Area), and nation (China).

[2017 - 2021] The National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (no. 41625003)

Senior Investigator

Geo-spatial models and analytical methods

Investigate human behavior characteristics from the perspective of the interaction between people and geographical environment with the support of big geo-data using deep learning methods using PyTorch on Linux.

[2017 - 2021] The National Key Research and Development Program of China (no. 2017YFB0503600)

Senior Investigator

Big geo-data mining and spatio-temporal pattern discovery

Represent and model diverse geospatial semantics of locations and develop spatial prediction approaches incorporating locations' relatedness.

[2018 - 2019] The China Scholarship Council funding (no. 201806010077)

Principal Investigator

Modelling spatial heterogeneity and spatial interactions from the big geo-data perspective

Develop a spatio-temporal Geo-propagation method for sparse geospatial data prediction with an application of the house price estimation in Beijing from 2011-2018.

[2018 - 2021] A 2C location recommender and time planning Map App for offline meetup

Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer (CPO)

Startup project at Beijing Jikewenqing(GeekArt) Technology Co. Ltd.

Integrate existing algorithms of location-related schedule planning and location recommendation in the context of clients' business scenarios: negotiate time according to every participant's schedule and activity preference.

[2015 - 2016] National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 41428102)

Senior Investigator

Spatial optimizing of urban facilities to mitigate traffic congestion: a case study of Beijing

[2013 - 2016] National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 41271386)

Senior Investigator

Investigating human mobility pattern based on massive spatio-temporal data

Investigate the GPS-enabled taxis' origin and destination (OD) distributions, mobility patterns and relations with urban structure, street networks. Develop spatio-temporal data mining algorithms for processing large-scale geo-data using Python and PostgreSQL.