Team

We are a group of researchers enthusiastic about applying innovative analytical methods for urban planning and design. The explosion of data and technological advancement in recent years have created important opportunities for developing our understanding of how cities function and are planned. We have been collaborating with colleagues from engineering, medicine, science, and public health on research into the interactions between technology, society, and planning.

Director

• Li Yin, PhD

• Associate Professor - Department of Urban and Regional Planning
• Dr. Yin's research focuses on computer technology applications in a wide variety of urban growth issues and inner-city redevelopment. She is interested in exploring new tools which enable a high level of visualization, simulations, 3-D modeling, and database management to construct scenarios and evaluate alternatives to facilitate better communication and increase efficiency in the planning process.
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Research Members

• Hao Zhang, PhD

• Hao is the Vice President / Chief Operating Officer of the Urban League of Rochester Economic Development Corporation (ULREDC). He actively serves as a board member for Rochester Downtown Development Corporation (RDDC). Hao received his PhD from the University at Buffalo under supervision of Prof. Li Yin. He is interested in affordable housing development, build environment and public health, and spatial analytics.

• Chihuangji (Herbert) Wang, PhD    

• Dr. Herbert Wang is currently serving as a Visiting Teaching Assistant Professor in the Urban Studies program. His doctoral research focused on utilizing urban big data to assess customer satisfaction with Transportation Network Companies (TNCs). Dr. Wang's research areas encompass smart cities, urban analytics, transportation planning, and GIS spatial analysis. He has published articles in various journals, including Sustainable Cities and Society, Journal of Urban Planning and Development, Transportation Research Record, and Journal of Transport & Health. His most recent research delves into micro-mobility usage patterns, as well as the challenges and opportunities during the implementation stage.
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• Fuzhen Yin

• Fuzhen is a second-year doctoral student from the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, SUNY UB. Fuzhen received her first Master's degree Diplôme d'État de Paysagiste (DEP) from ENSAP Bordeaux, France, and her second Master's degree in Spatial Data Science and Visualization from UCL, UK. Fuzhen is interested in spatial analysis and urban design. Her works investigate how the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) could challenge our thinking about space, place and urban forms through social network analysis, machine learning and agent-based modeling.

• Yixuan (E) Zhao

• E is a specialist in urban information science. He has earned a dual master's degree in Urban Planning and Geographic Information Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He came from China, where he obtained a post-secondary degree in Environmental Design and a Bachelor of Science in Interior Design from the Shintaro Akatsu School of Design at the University of Bridgeport. His research interest is in urban information science. He was dedicated to using data-driven methods to solve various problems that emerged in the process of urban development, such as traffic congestion, environmental pollution, social inequality, and public health risks. To achieve this aim, he employed geographic information systems, dynamic modeling, and other advanced tools to study the process of simulating urban development and its impacts on different aspects of urban life.
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 Affiliated Faculty Members

• Robert Silverman, PhD

• Robert Silverman is a professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the State University of New York at Buffalo. His work focuses on community development, affordable housing, and education policy, with a particular interest in shrinking cities. An internationally regarded planning scholar, Silverman says research is critical to the practice of planning as a source of fresh perspectives on recurring problems, critique, and informed empirical analysis and advocacy for equity and inclusion.
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• Hao Huang, PhD

• Hao Huang is an Assistant Professor at Illinois Tech. Her expertise is in the areas of economic geography and development, urban geography and planning, GIS, and quantitative methods. Her research interests are focused on the spatial patterns, dynamics, and mechanisms of economic activities, and their effects at different space-time scales. Specifically, at the international and regional levels, she is interested in locational choices and determinants of global economic activities including foreign direct investment and trade, and their effects on countries and metropolitan regions with respect to inequality and poverty, job creation, and innovation. At the local level, she is interested in residential and industrial location choices and their effects on cities and places with respect to agglomeration economies, housing, and built environment and health. To examine the locational decisions of individuals and firms, she uses a variety of spatial techniques, data-driven analysis, and quantitative methods to visualize, simulate, and analyze their behaviors on locational decisions.
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• Zhenfeng Shao, PhD

• Zhenfeng Shao is a professor in the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping, and Remote Sensing (LIESMARS) at Wuhan University. His research interest mainly focuses on urban remote sensing applications. The specific research directions include high-resolution remote sensing image processing and analysis, key technologies, and applications from digital cities to smart cities and sponge cities.
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• Brian Muller, PhD

• Brian Muller is the CEDaR faculty director and an associate professor in the environmental design program at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he teaches environment and land use planning, planning history, and spatial analysis. His research interests include community engagement, spatial analysis, environment/land use policy, and resilient infrastructure.
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• Mo Han, PhD 

• Dr. Mo Han presently serves as a Machine Learning and Data Scientist at Autodesk. Her research endeavors encompass a diverse range of Machine Learning fields, prominently focusing on Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, and Multi-Modal Signal Processing. She attained her Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Northeastern University, Boston, in 2021. Prior to this, she obtained her Master's and Bachelor's degrees in Information and Communication Engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology in 2017 and 2015, respectively.