People

	Qunying Huang H.I. Romnes Professor As a researcher, my passion is to bridge the gap between Geography and Computer Science. My research focuses on using AI/ML and remote (physical)/social sensing for natural hazards (e.g., floods and wildfires), digital agriculture, urban informatics, human mobility and social/environmental justice. As an instructor, my passion is to help my students become fast, effective, and efficient learners, cultivate their problem-solving skills, and equip them with geospatial techniques for their future careers. As a mentor, my passion is to help my advisees discover their passions, become independent, creative spatial thinkers, and avoid the detours, and pitfall that I have experienced in my early career. As a human being, I love my family, friends, skiing, traveling, reading, recycling…..and so much more. “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” — Forrest Gump Full CV
	Chenxiao (Atlas) Guo Ph.D. Student My name is Chenxiao Guo and I go by “Atlas”. I am a Geography Ph.D. student (Cartography and GIS subarea) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a doctoral minor in Computer Science. I received my M.S. in Geography from the University of Georgia (Athens, GA), and B.S. in Geographic Information Systems from Sun Yat-Sen University (Guangzhou, China). With general interests in GIScience and cartography, my research direction includes spatiotemporal analytics, cartographic visualization, social media text mining, and disaster management, devoted to bridging geospatial data science and social good. As an “Atlas”, collecting maps is deservedly my biggest hobby. Apart from a map geek, I also love English and Chinese calligraphy, stone seal carving (Zhuanke), as well as musical instruments like Guqin and tin whistle.
	Meiliu Wu Ph.D. Student, 2021-2024; M.S., Cartography/GIS, 2017 – 2019 I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Geography with a minor in Computer Sciences at UW-Madison. I also gained my Master’s degree here majoring in Cartography and GIScience in 2019. During 2019-2021, I worked as a Spatial Data Scientist at a start-up company and gained more applicable experience in using GIScience techniques to solve problems in the real world. The more achievements I got from my work, the more passionate I became about going further and deeper. That is the reason why I came back to academia and started my Ph.D. career – I enjoy the purity and independence of being a dedicated scholar and conducting research with a collaborative effort. I want to work as a researcher to exchange and implement novel ideas on GIScience, as an educator to spread the beauty of GIScience, and as a humble scholar to explore more possibilities in the power of GIScience. Currently, my research interests focus on using Geospatial Data Science and GeoAI (e.g., spatially explicit vision-language multi-modal learning) for various geospatial applications, such as human mobility, segregation, and social (in)equity; urban informatics (e.g., mixed land use measurement, urban perception prediction, and image geo-localization); and environmental studies and justice (e.g., flood mapping, post-wildfire detection, citizen-sourced application development for rapid disaster response). Updated CV Personal website
	Songxi Yang Ph.D. Student I’m Songxi Yang, pursuing a Ph.D. in Geography at the Department of Geography, UW-Madison. I gained my Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Remote Sensing at China University of Geosciences. I’m interested in characterizing Earth’s environmental challenges and consequences with RS, Cartography/GIS, and CS. During my master’s program, I investigated how vegetation photosynthesis and carbon fluxes respond to climate change using in-situ Earth observations, remote sensing imagery, and ecological modeling. Currently, my research interests also include active wildfire detection and machine learning.
	Ashmita Dhakal M.S. Student (Co-advise with Prof. A-Xing Zhu) I am a graduate student in MS Cartography/GIS at UW-Madison. In 2019, I received my Bachelor of Engineering degree in Geomatics Engineering from Kathmandu University, Nepal. After my undergrad, I worked as a GIS Analyst/Civil Engineer at several organizations including ICIMOD and Verisk Nepal. I also worked as a Survey Officer for the Government of Nepal for the past two years. I have diverse research interests which include agricultural and environmental modeling, spatiotemporal analysis using GIS and RS, application of AI in spatial analysis, and geovisualization. Apart from that, in my free time, I like traveling, hiking, gardening, watching movies, and reading novels.
	Yi Zhuang M.S. Student I am a master student majoring in Data Science. I am generally interested in GIScience and geospatial data science and currently working on hydrology missing data inference and prediction with Graph Neural Network.
	Tang Sui Undergraduate, Geography I am an undergraduate student studying remote sensing. I have a keen interest in combining traditional remote sensing issues with advanced ML and DL methods. My current research focuses on using bi-temporal images of wildfire events to segment burnt areas. In my future career, I plan to continue working on wildfire detection and exploring other issues using the latest methods.
	Mose Skolnick Undergraduate, Data Science + Cartography & GIS I am an undergraduate here at the University of Wisconsin, and I am double majoring in Data Science and Cartography & GIS. I am particularly interested in learning how to apply Data Science and GIS techniques to tackle real world problems, particularly areas that concern the environment.
	Mingda Wu Undergraduate, Geography I am an undergraduate in Geography at Northern Illinois University. I am interested in computer vision and enjoy doing some research beneficial to society with AI. My current research focuses on developing a machine learning model to automatically assess post-fire damage severity level based on analyzing remote sensing images.
	Haiyue Wu Undergraduate, Computer Science + Cartography & GIScience I’m a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, pursuing a dual major in CS and Cartography & GIScience. My primary research interests are centered around the crop yield prediction and visualization, including the development of interactive web functions, front-end design, database construction, and the implementation of running prediction models through the web interface.

Lab Alumni

	Xinyi Liu (Ph.D., Geography, 2018-2022; M.S., Cartography/GIS, 2016 – 2018) Senior Research Scientist, ZooX Inc.
	Jirapa (Jamp) Vongkusolkit (M.S., Cartography/GIS, 2021- 2023; Undergraduate, Environmental Science, 2020-202) Senior Research Scientist, PAII Inc.
	Ishika Akula (Undergraduate, Computer Science , 2021 – 2022) M.S., Computer Science department, UW-Madison
	Boyuan Zou (Undergraduate, Computer Science , 2021 – 2023) M.S., Computer Science department, UW-Madison.
	Yang (Eric) Qiu (Undergraduate, Computer Science + Data Science, 2021 – 2023) M.S., Computer Science department, UC San Diego.
	Bo Peng (Ph.D., Cartography/GIS, 2017 – 2021) Senior Research Scientist, PAII Inc.
	Yuehan Qin (Undergraduate, Geography & Computer Science Department, 2010 – 2022) Ph.D, Computer Science, University of Southern California
	Tianhui (Vicky) Cai (Undergraduate, Computer Science Department, 2010 – 2022) M.S, The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
	Zonglin Meng (Undergraduate, Computer Science Department, 2017 – 2019) Ph.D, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UCLA
	Chris Scheele (M.S., Cartography/GIS, 2015 – 2017) Data Analytics Engineer, Arity
	Zidong Zhang (M.S., Cartography/GIS, 2014 – 2016) Senior Software Engineer, Facebook
	Duanyang Jing (M.S., Cartography/GIS, 2014 – 2016) Senior Software Engineer, Huawei
	More proud badgers…. Jonathan Fok (2017) Beichen Tian (2017) Cassie Jorgenson (2016) Catherine Epp Streiffer (Summer 2015) Caitlin McKown (2015 Fall – 2016 Fall) Chelbi Stromblad (2015 Spring) Samuel Schumacher (2014)