News

• [September 22, 2025]: Congratulations to Jiayi Song, Hao-Yu Liao 🎉 on their latest journal publication in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation! Their paper, “Mapping invasive Opuntia stricta in Kenya’s Drylands using explainable machine learning with time-series remote sensing and geographic context”, demonstrates how explainable AI and geospatial data can support ecological monitoring and invasive species management 🌵🌍. This is an excellent contribution to both environmental science and applied AI research!
  📄 Read the article here

  

• [September 10, 2025]: Congratulations to Jiayi Song, Hao-Yu Liao 🎉 for having two papers accepted to the 33rd ACM International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (SIGSPATIAL ’25), which will be held in Minneapolis, MN, USA from November 3–6, 2025! The first paper, “FoundationSoil: Enhancing Soil Organic Carbon Mapping Using a Multi-Temporal Geospatial Foundation Model”, introduces a foundation model for improving soil carbon mapping 🌱. The second paper, “Mapping Cultural Ecosystem Services Using One-Shot In-Context Learning with Multimodal Large Language Models”, explores how multimodal AI can capture cultural ecosystem services in innovative new ways 🤖🌍. Amazing work from the team on advancing geospatial AI!
  📄 FoundationSoil DOI | 📄 Cultural Ecosystem Services DOI | 🔗 Conference Link

• [June 5-6, 2025]: Congratulations to Joseph Benjamin and Hao-Yu Liao for presenting our research at the Resilience in Urban Environments toward SDG Sustainable Cities conference in Cuenca, Ecuador 🌍! Their poster, titled “Modelling the inequitable distribution of aesthetic green views across dimensions of supply, demand, accessibility, and flow”, sheds light on how urban green aesthetics are unevenly distributed and why this matters for equitable and sustainable city design 🌱. Amazing work by the team!

• [April 21, 2025]: Congratulations to Joseph B. Benjamin for winning first place in the undergraduate Three Minute Capstone (3MC) in Sustainability and the Built Environment (SBE) at University of Florida!! 🎉🎉👏 Our research explores the spatial variability and interconnections of aesthetic green view (AGV) supply and flows in urban streetscapes, emphasizing their broader significance for urban greening initiatives 🌳. Joseph also have received scholarship to present our research at Resilience in the Built Environment 2025, which will be held at the Universidad de Cuenca on June 5th and 6th, 2025. Congats on all the achievement.

  

• [April 12, 2025]: Congratulations to Olivia Zhang for being the winner of the 2025 John R. and Fawn T. Dunkle Geography Award !! 🎉🎉👏 The Dunkle award honors the long-time service and devotion of Professor John R. Dunkle to the Department of Geography at the University of Florida. Olivia is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Geography along with a dual degree in Data Science. She has shown sustained academic excellence, involvement in departmental and university activities, leadership and/or strong promise for graduate study.

  

• [March 18, 2025]: Congratulations to Olivia Zhang on receiving the esteemed AI University Scholars Award for 2025-2026 at the University of Florida! 🎉🎉👏 This program was established to support outstanding undergraduate students venturing into the exciting world of academic research. As an AI University scholar in our lab, Olivia focuses on developing computer vision models to detect urban agriculture using both environmental and social sensing.

  

• [September 20, 2024]: Congratulations Dr. Hao-Yu Liao on winning the Travel Awards at our first-ever UF Postdoctoral Affairs Awards Ceremony! 🎉🎉🎉

  

• [March 18, 2024]: Congratulations to Joseph B. Benjamin on receiving the esteemed AI Scholars Award for 2024-2025 at the University of Florida! 🎉🎉👏 As an AI scholar in our lab, Joseph focuses on applying image segmentation models for cultural ecosystem services assessments in urban areas.