Xingjing Xu

Xingjing Xu

Department of Urban and Regional Planning
Research Assistant Scientist
352-295-8799
ARCH 416

University of Florida, PhD Urban Planning, 2021
University of Florida, M.S. Statistics, 2019
Bauhaus University, M.S. Advanced Urbanism, 2014
Tongji University, Master of Engineering, Urban Planning, 2014
Tongji University, Bachelor of Engineering, Urban Planning and Design, 2011

RESEARCH AREAS

• Transportation safety
• Geospatial analysis
• Urban planning and design
• Automation of GIS

BIO

Xingjing Xu has joined the University of Florida Department of Urban and Regional Planning in 2022 as a Research Assistant Scientist. She has extensive experience in transportation safety analysis and geospatial techniques in urban planning and design. Her research work includes transportation safety studies and automated GIS application developments.

She received her Ph.D. with a concentration in urban planning and a Master of science in statistics from University of Florida. She also holds a Bachelor and a Master of Engineering in urban planning and design from Tongji University. She worked as an urban planner at Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning & Design Institute, and her practitioner work includes urban design and ecocity technologies.

Nicholas Serrano

Nicholas Serrano

Department of Landscape Architecture
Assistant Professor
(352) 392-4836
ARCH 430

• Ph.D., North Carolina State University, 2022
• MLA, Ball State University, 2011
• BS, North Carolina State University, 2007

Nicholas Serrano came to UF from the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture at Louisiana State University where he holds the Neil Odenwald Professorship. He has a Bachelor of Science in horticulture from North Carolina State University, a Master of landscape architecture from Ball State University, and a Ph.D. in the design program at North Carolina State University. Nicholas has taught introductory ecology, ornamental landscape plants, planting design, and various histories of the built environment at North Carolina State University and Ball State University.  His main research project looks at the history of landscape architecture and urban development of the American South. His writing spans the disciplines of Landscape and Environmental History, Southern Studies, and Material Culture to consider the construction of racial identity through the built environment. His secondary research and teaching interests are in contemporary planting design and horticultural technologies in landscape architecture.

Gabriel Castelblanco

Gabriel Castelblanco

M.E. Rinker, Sr. School of Construction Management
Assistant Professor
352-273-0563
RINKER 315

PhD, Universidad de los Andes, 2022

Google Scholar | LinkedIn | ResearchGate

Before joining Rinker, Dr. Gabriel Castelblanco was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Turin in Italy, Lecturer and ad-hoc researcher in the School of Engineering at the University of Central Lancashire (UK). He taught Project Management and Construction Project Management. He has collaborated with universities in Latin America (Chile and Colombia), Europe (the Netherlands, the UK, and Italy), and an Australian research center (CSIRO – Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation). Dr. Castelblanco also worked as a practitioner for more than eight years in Real Estate Project Management.

His research focuses on decision support systems, governance, and risk analysis for alternative project deliveries. He has published over 20 peer-reviewed papers in the fields of P3s and project finance. He is also an Associate Member of the ASCE and a reviewer for its Journal of Management in Engineering and the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. His experience as a project management practitioner adds value to his academic role to guide students in combining theoretical principles with real-world experience. He encourages students’ collaborative problem-solving approach in an environment where making mistakes is safe, which empowers them to bring their experiences and prior knowledge to the class.

Renee Tapp

Renee Tapp

Department of Urban and Regional Planning
Assistant Professor
352-294-1485
ARCH 450

PhD, Clark University, 2018

Renee Tapp is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Florida. Dr. Tapp’s research and teaching interests focus on the political economy of housing and real estate. Her current projects examine (1) the impact of institutional real estate investment in rental housing markets; (2) changes to the ownership and management of government real property; and (3) the municipal housing bond market and the relationship between public and private finance.

Her work has been published in a range of journals, including Antipode; City; Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space; Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space; Geoforum; and Urban Geography. The National Science Foundation, the Urban Studies Foundation, the Harvard University Real Estate Research Grant program, and the Government Finance Research Center at the University of Illinois Chicago have funded her research.

Before joining the University of Florida, she was an Urban Studies Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Illinois Chicago and a Pollman Fellow in Real Estate and Urban Development at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. She completed her PhD in Geography at Clark University in 2018.  

 

Kyle Dost

Kyle Dost

Department of Urban and Regional Planning
Instructional Assistant Professor
352-294-1486
ARCH 441

• Ph.D., University of Florida, Currently Pursuing
• Master of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Florida, 2017
• Bachelor of Science in Environmental Policy and Planning, Virginia Tech University, 2015

 

Kyle is faculty with the University of Florida’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning where he serves as Program Director for the Master of Urban and Regional Planning online degree program. His role involves strategic program administration, fiscal management, and direct engagement with students through advising, internship placement, and professional development. He teaches URP 3001, Cities of the World, and leads students on international study abroad experiences.

Kyle is AICP certified and currently serves as Professional Development Officer for the Sun Coast section of the American Planning Association. He has hosted a variety of professional events for the Section, including AICP trivia and webinars as well as a webinar on Artificial Intelligence in Planning.

His primary areas of knowledge include planning education, natural resource management, international development, and community resilience. He holds a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Florida and a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Policy and Planning from Virginia Tech.

Kyle is currently pursuing his doctorate at University of Florida.

Nikola Marinčić

Nikola Marinčić

School of Architecture
Assistant Professor
ARCH 138

Dr. Nikola Marinčić joined the School of Architecture from ETH Zurich, where he worked as a lecturer at the chair of Digital Architectonics and the doctoral program coordinator at the Institute of Technology in Architecture (ITA). He graduated as an architect in Serbia and later obtained a master’s of Advanced Studies degree at ETH Zurich, where he studied the philosophy of technology and computer-aided architectural design. During his postgraduate studies, Marinčić worked for one year as a guest researcher at the Future Cities Laboratory, an interdisciplinary research program of the Singapore ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability. In 2017, he was awarded the ETH Medal of Distinction for an outstanding doctoral dissertation on computational models in architecture.

Marinčić investigates the relationship between architecture and information technology, especially the challenges Artificial Intelligence poses to the field. He strives to illuminate the exceptional relevance of digital literacy today. He recognizes its applicability as universal – beyond disciplines, different practices and topical expertise. His monograph “Computational Models in Architecture,” published by Birkhauser/De Gruyter in 2019, celebrates abstract, spectral model-thinking and opens up multiple perspectives on how digitally literate architects could reinvent their field in the digital age. 

Dennis Mitterer

Dennis Mitterer

M.E. Rinker, Sr. School of Construction Management
Fire and Emergency Services Instructional Professor & Advisor
352-273-1084
RINKER 336

Dr. Mitterer completed his Ph.D. in Leadership and Organizational Change from Walden University focusing on the effects of a leader’s behavior on employee job satisfaction, productivity, engagement and turnover. Mitterer draws on social science theories to develop future leaders in the Fire and Emergency Services Program at Rinker School. Dr. Mitterer has extensive practical experience in leadership in the private sector, health care, emergency services, and in higher education.  

Dr. Mitterer has published numerous articles on diverse subjects related to safety in emergency services, risk management, the use of technology in the delivery of patient care, and leadership’s effect on trust and psychological safety. He has also published books on Personal Wellness, Finance, and Risk Management.  

Prior to joining UF, full time, Mitterer taught at Lebanon Valley College, Immaculata College, and the Pennsylvania College of Health. He earned his master’s degree in Management from Penn State University, Smeal Business College, bachelor’s degree from Penn State University, in nursing, and a bachelor’s degree in business from Elizabethtown College.  

Stathis G. Yeros

Stathis G. Yeros

School of Architecture
Assistant Professor
3522941457
ARCH 256

Dr. Stathis G. Yeros completed his Ph.D. in Architectural History, Theory and Society at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on how space affects and is affected by struggles for social justice, focusing on queer and transgender cultures and politics. His recent article, “AIDS and the City: Bathhouses, Emplaced Empathy, and the Desexualization of San Francisco” (Urban History) examines how the iconographies of domesticity and death during the AIDS devastation changed contemporary urban homosexual politics. Dr. Yeros has published on queer and trans-of color spatial activism and on the subject of queer ecologies (with Chandra Laborde, UC Berkeley). He is currently working on his book manuscript, Queering Urbanism: Architecture, Embodiment, and Queer Citizenship. The book analyzes intersectional politics and cultural representations of gender, race, bodily ability and sexuality in queer and trans spaces. It uses the lens of queer insurgent citizenship to rework the meaning of diversity and inclusion in the built environment as a set of rights rather than accommodations. Yeros is also co-organizer of the ongoing Queer Ecological Imaginations working group, a collaborative platform seeking to address pernicious environmental injustices at a time of ecological collapse, which is supported by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, and Cal’s Center for Race and Gender. Prior to his Ph.D. Yeros earned a master’s of architecture from Berkeley, where he was the recipient of a yearlong Branner Traveling Fellowship. He also earned a master’s in Art History and Theater from the University of Glasgow, and practiced architecture in San Francisco.

Jiayang Li

Jiayang Li

Department of Landscape Architecture, Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER)
Assistant Professor
ARCH 456

Dr. Jiayang Li is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of landscape design and climate change adaptation. Her research tackles the challenge of creating landscape change that makes communities more resilient and is welcomed by community members. Currently, Jiayang draws on social science theories and methods to study everyday landscape experiences and community perceptions of novel nature-based solutions. She has published in multiple top-ranked journals including Landscape and Urban Planning and given guest lectures and conferences presentations nationally and internationally. Jiayang earned her Ph.D. in Environment and Sustainability and Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Michigan. She also holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Landscape Architecture from Tongji University in Shanghai, China. Before turning her primary focus to research, she had practiced in design firms including SmithGroup and AECOM.

Shenhao Wang

Shenhao Wang

Department of Urban and Regional Planning
Assistant Professor
ARCH 434

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Ph.D. Computer and Urban Science,
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), M.S. Transportation and Master City Planning,
• Peking University, B.A. Economics,
• Tsinghua University, B.A. Architecture and Law, Master in Architecture, 2012

 

Shenhao Wang is an assistant professor and the director of the Urban AI Laboratory at the University of Florida. He investigates three research themes in intelligent individual decisions, spatiotemporal urban dynamics, and computational urban justice. The first theme focuses on the individual decisions by integrating discrete choice models and deep learning with wide urban applications in the choice of travel modes, residential locations, and urban activities. The second theme treats cities as an interrelated system. By integrating network theory and deep learning, it quantifies the spatiotemporal dynamics between people and places, thus facilitating the design of resilient and sustainable urban systems. The third research theme focuses on the normative aspect of urban science by enhancing transparency, accountability, and fairness of the urban machine intelligence to achieve broad social impacts. With the theoretical innovations and practical impacts, the lab seeks to create a more sustainable, intelligent, and equitable urban future with artificial intelligence. His research has been funded by Department of Energy (DOE), Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), and industrial partners. Dr. Wang completed his interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Computer and Urban Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2020. He received B.A. in Economics from Peking University (2014) and B.A. in architecture and law from Tsinghua University (2011), Master of Science in Transportation, and Master of City Planning from MIT (2017).

Research Areas
• Urban science
• Deep learning
• Choice modeling
• Urban mobility
• Network analysis

Links

  1. Urban AI Lab: http://urbanailab.com/
  2. Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=01AmQ8wAAAAJ&hl=en

PUBLICATIONS
·      S. Wang, Q. Wang and J. Zhao*. “Deep neural networks for choice analysis: Extracting complete economic information for interpretation”, Transportation research part C: emerging technologies, 118: 102701
·      S. Wang and J. Zhao*. “Risk preference and adoption of autonomous vehicles.” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 126, 215-229.
·      D. Zhuang, S. Wang*, H. Koutsopoulos, and J. Zhao, “Uncertainty quantification of sparse trip demand prediction with spatial-temporal graph neural networks”, (Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining)
·      S. Cranenburgh*, S. Wang, A. Vij, F. Pereira, and J. Walker, “Choice modeling in an age of machine learning – discussion paper”, (Journal of Choice Modeling: 100340)
·      Y. Zheng, S. Wang*, and J. Zhao, “Equality of opportunity in travel demand prediction with deep neural networks and discrete choice models”, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies. 132: 103410.

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