Changjie is a planner and statistician whose research emphasis is directed at the simulation of future land-use scenarios and transportation modeling by integrating spatial analytics, High-Performance Computing (HPC), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms.
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.
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.
• 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.
• 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
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.
Lingqian (Ivy) Hu is a professor in Urban and Regional Planning who joined the University of Florida College of Design, Construction and Planning on July 1, 2022. She serves as the chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning as well as the associate director of the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning.
Professor Hu’s work has focused on the interrelationship between transportation and land use, with an emphasis on equity. She has extensive knowledge of real-world planning and policy efforts to promote just and prosperous cities, reduce socio-spatial inequity and enhance environmental justice and public health. Hu has been published extensively in prestigious urban planning and transportation journals, and has led more than $1 million funded research projects supported by the National Science Foundation and other agencies. One example of the impacts of her research is FlexRide Milwaukee, which pilots a new micro-transit service to address a long-term transportation gap in the Milwaukee region.
Before joining UF, Hu was a professor and the chair of the Urban Planning Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She received her Ph.D. (of Policy, Planning and Development) and master’s (in Planning) degrees from the University of Southern California and her bachelor’s degree (in Planning) from Nanjing University. She worked as a planner at the Southern California Association of Governments (Los Angeles) and the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design (Shenzhen, China).
Cleary Larkin (clarkin@ufl.edu) is a licensed architect with specialized practice experience in historic preservation and community planning. She holds a professional degree in Architecture from the University of Arkansas, a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. with a concentration in Urban Planning from the University of Florida.
She has worked as an architect and a preservation planner at Frazier Associates in Staunton, Virginia; Beyer Blinder Belle in New York City and for the City of Gainesville, Florida. Her practitioner experience includes adaptive re-use, restoration and rehabilitation; design and project management of architectural projects from programming through construction; research and writing for Historic Structure Reports, National Register nominations, rehabilitation tax credits, and design guidelines; design review in historic districts; new design within historic contexts; and use of fiscal incentives for redevelopment.
Dr. Larkin’s dissertation, Expanding the Historic Preservation Narrative: The intersections of planning, preservation and social context in the Vieux Carré Historic District designation, explored the collaboration between architects, preservation activists and planner Harland Bartholomew to create the New Orleans’ first Comprehensive Plan in 1929 and first legislation for the French Quarter historic district in 1925 and 1937, respectively.
Prior to her role as Acting Director of UF’s Historic Preservation program, Dr. Larkin was Program Coordinator for the newly formed Florida Resilient Cities (FRC) program at UF’s Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER). The first FRC project focused on sustainable recovery and growth of Port St. Joe, a historic mill town in the Florida panhandle, damaged by Hurricane Michael in 2018.
Dr. Larkin’s research interests include the intersections of architecture, preservation and planning, both in historical and contemporary practice; historic land-use decisions as a source of inequity in communities; and historic preservation as a social justice practice. She currently teaches Intro to History and Theory of Historic Preservation at the Graduate and Undergraduate levels, and two courses in the summer field course at Preservation Institute Nantucket (PIN): World Heritage Research and Stewardship, and Preservation Policy and Current Topics.
Erik Finlay is an Assistant Scholar at the University of Florida GeoPlan Center. As an experienced geospatial professional, Erik supports research, teaching, and service at the Center. His research focuses on geospatial analysis, data management, and the development of decision-support tools for projects related to public health, transportation, and environmental and urban planning.
Erik completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Geography and Master of Public Health degree at the University of Florida, as well as a Certificate in Spatial Analysis for Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. With his background in GIS and public health, Erik serves as a key team member on health-related geospatial projects at the Center. This work has led to several successful collaborations with UF faculty in the health sciences.
Erik is also an instructor and program advisor for the Online Graduate Certificate in GIS for Urban and Regional Planners at the University of Florida. As lead instructor for URP6278: Web Mapping and Visualization, Erik teaches concepts, techniques, and software for sharing and displaying geographic information on the web. He is also guest instructor for URP6275: Intermediate Planning Information Systems, and earned a “UF 2019 Exemplary Online Award” for his contribution to the course.
It is with great pleasure that we introduce Sam Palmer, an Assistant Scholar and full time faculty since 2017, at the University of Florida – GeoPlan Center. Sam joined the Center as a research assistant in 2000, then became a full time employee in 2003. He earned a BS in Environmental Science in 1999 then MA in Urban and Regional Planning in 2003, both degrees from the University of Florida.
Sam is an experienced geospatial professional that supports research, teaching, and service at the Center. He assists the Center’s Principal Investigators in management of funded research projects using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). He works closely with faculty, researchers, project sponsors, and external organizations to identify and assess geospatial problems, develop solutions, and present recommendations for resolution.
Sam’s work at the Center spans a variety of topics, such as:
Emre Tepe, Ph.D. has joined the University of Florida School of Landscape Architecture and Planning for the Fall 2019 semester as an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning. Dr. Tepe works on modeling spatio-temporal dynamics of land development. He also builds statistical software and applications for large-scale data processing. His primary academic interests include Spatial Econometrics, Urban Simulation, Spatial Statistics & Analysis, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Optimization, Urban Economics, and Software Development.
After graduated from Istanbul Technical University with a bachelor’s degree in urban and regional planning and a master’s degree in urban planning. He was awarded a Fulbright Doctoral Scholarship to study at the Ohio State University and he earned his PhD in City and Regional Planning from the Ohio State University. He was also received Patricia Burgess Award for the Best Dissertation upon completion of his doctoral study.
Prior to beginning his position at the University of Florida, he worked as Assistant Professor at Gebze Technical University for almost 2 years, and as Adjunct Faculty in Kadir Has and Cankaya Universities for about a year in Turkey. He has taught courses on statistics, quantitative methods, urban economy, housing and planning practices. Currently, he teaches Quantitative Data Analysis for Planners, Urban Spatial Analysis, Urban Economy and Urban Planning Project courses in the Urban and Regional Planning graduate programs at UF.