Mengchao Xu

Dr. Manzhu Yu received her bachelor's degree in Remote Sensing from Wuhan University in 2012 and Ph.D. degree in Earth Systems and Geoinformation Sciences from George Mason University in Fall 2017. Her research mainly focuses on the core areas of GIScience and outreach to environmental science and computational science. Her dissertation uses dust events as an example to detect extreme weather events using spatiotemporal methodologies and techniques. Her dissertation research won first place in the Best Paper Competition at the Second International Symposium on Spatiotemporal Computing in Boston in August 2017. She authored and co-authored 18 publications in top-tier journals including International Journal of Geographic Information Science (IJGIS), Computers, Environment and Urban Systems (CEUS), and PLoS ONE. She is also the second author of a textbook and author of multiple book chapters. She has applied and received funding as a Co-I for multiple projects from NASA and NSF. She devotes herself to professional services supporting the communities of GIScience, by serving as the organizing committee for meetings (e.g., AAG Spatiotemporal Symposiums) and international workshops over the past four years. Currently, she works as a postdoc research associate at the NSF Spatiotemporal Innovation Center. She’s working on spatiotemporal analytics, deep learning, remote sensing, big spatial data and cloud computing, and the application of these to solve pressing environmental issues.