News

Here we provide GeoAIR Lab news.

[03/2026] GeoAIR lab Director Dr. Liping Yang received the 2026 AI Literacy Faculty Fellows from the College of Arts & Sciences at University of New Mexico.

[07/2025] GeoAIR Lab’s very own Sarigai (Rose) has received multiple offers from respected universities and will be joining UC Santa Barbara in August 2025. Congratulations, Sarigai! We wish you a bright future, and the entire GeoAIR Lab is very proud of your accomplishments.

[06/2025] GeoAIR Lab’s very own Katie presented a lightning talk at UCGIS Symposium 2025, Laramie, WY and won the lightning talk award.

[06/2025] GeoAIR Lab’s very own Sarigai has successfully defended her dissertation ( with distinction). Congratulations, Sarigai, way to go.

[04/2025] GeoAIR Lab’s very own Katie has successfully defended thesis work on leveraging open-source technology and citizen science to monitor urban biodiversity.

[11/2024] GeoAIR lab has one paper (a significant piece of contribution to cartography, geovisualization and high-dimensional geospatial big data) accepted and published in Transactions in GIS  — a top journal in GIScience). The paper is titled, “dciWebMapper: A Data-Driven and Coordinated View-Enabled Interactive Web Mapping Framework for Visualizing and Sensing High-Dimensional Geospatial (Big) Data“(doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/tgis.13277).

    • This is GeoAIR lab’s very own PhD student Sarigai’s first lead author paper from her dissertation work, and there are a few more to come soon. Congratulations, Sarigai! GeoAIR lab is very proud of you.
    • In addition, this paper could not exist, or more precisely, could not reach the current high quality without the very constructive and responsible reviewers’ suggestions, feedback and the editors in Transactions in GIS‘s very supportive and knowledgeable help.
    • GeoAIR lab also would like to shout out loudly and proudly for our own  master student, Katie –Katie and the first two authors form a very core GeoAIR lab team spending  significant of time and effort and passion to revise and improve our paper to the quality level that we are very proud of based on responding and revise the three anonymous  reviewers’ very helpful feedback.
      • This paper also plays a very important role  for Katie to wrap up their own paper from their thesis work, and fomerly inspire and motivate her to start their academic journey.
    • The GeoAIR lab core team is also  very grateful for the rest of the co-authors’ very helpful contribution.
    • It is also nice to note that the paper gets published (online) on the Thanksgiving holiday of 2024 (Nov 28, 2024) — many thanks also goes to the professionalism of the production team at Transactions in GIS (Wiley) .
    • Linkedin post.

    • Some selected praise of the dciWebMapper framework:
        • “… I do appreciate for great and exclusive qualities research work. You are doing really great!! … Really I know that this type of papers needs great team with diverse people of various fields.” — An AI scholar with Cybersecurity & Healthcare expertise from Florida
        • “Excited to share our new paper in Transactions in GIS with the brilliant Liping Yang and her exceptional PhD student, Sarigai (Rose) Sarigai —two inspiring scholars making waves in the field! !…” — our co-author Professor Michaela Bueneman.

[11/2024] Our own Sarigai received the Graduate Student Success Scholarship ($6000, University of New Mexico). Congratulations, Sarigai, GeoAIR lab is very proud of you and way to go.

[11/2024] Our own Sarigai  entered  the finalist of the very competitive LoboBITES 3mins (1 slide) presentation at University of New Mexico . Congratulations, Sarigai, GeoAIR lab is very proud of you and way to go.

      • “The judges have “spoken” and you are among the Top Ten qualifying for the LoboBites Finals…”

[05/2024] Our own Katie received the Departmental Citizenship Award. Congratulations, Katie!

[05/2024] Our own Sarigai was offered a GIS internship from  the Nature Conservancy (TNC). Congratulations, Sarigai.

[04/2024] Our own Valeria presented her ASSUE award project (mentored by GeoAIR lab director Dr. Liping Yang) at UROC (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Conference) at UNM! Way to go, Valeria! GeoAIR lab is very proud of you!

[01/2024] Our own Valeria received an ASSURE award ((Arts & Sciences Support for Undergraduate Research Experience) from UNM College of Arts & Sciences to work with GeoAIR lab director Dr. Liping Yang to investigate deforestation in Amazon rainforests. Congratulations, Valeria!

[12/2023] When GeoAIR lab is about 3 years and a half, we are happily to let you know that we have our newly designed logo that conveys our lab’s focus, vision and mission! You are warmly invited to check out this 5-min GeoAIR lab story video.

[10/2023] GeoAIR lab director Dr. Yang gave an invited talk at NMGIC Fall Conference 2023, titled “Enhancing Land Cover Mapping and Monitoring: An Interactive and Explainable Machine Learning Approach Using Google Earth Engine”. It is a well-attended NMGIC conference, about 100 attendees.

[09/2023] GeoAIR lab’s recent Alumni Joshua accepted a position as Research Assistant from Woodwell Climate Research Center. Congratulations, Joshua! Very best wishes for the new position and we hope you will have a fruitful and  impactful research journey with the Woodwell  Center.

[09/2023] GeoAIR lab has two journal articles got accepted

[08/16/2023]  Katie, the GeoAIR Lab welcomes you and we look forward to a successful and fruitful journey with you! Welcome aboard!

[05/2023] GeoAIR lab’s very own Joshua receives outstanding graduate student award. Very well done, Joshua!

[04/2023] GeoAIR lab’s very own Joshua is presenting his project  titled, “abqMaps: an interactive environmental justice map for Albuquerque, New Mexico” at NMGIC workshop, as he is the NMGIC 2023 Scholarship awardee. Joshua, GeoAIR lab is very proud of you! (See the tweet HERE.)

[03/2023] GeoAIR lab’s very own Sarigai successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation  proposal . Congratulations, Sarigai! GeoAIR lab is very proud of you! You are ABD now, and a milestone step to Dr. Sarigai!

[02/2023] GeoAIR lab’s very own Joshua successfully defended his MS project with distinction, titled, “abqMaps: an interactive environmental justice map for Albuquerque, New Mexico”. Congratulations, Joshua! GeoAIR lab is very proud of you! Very best wishes for your bright future.

[01/2023] GeoAIR lab led paper “Google Earth Engine and Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Comprehensive Review“ is Editor’s Choice article and is one of the Highly Cited Papers, top downloaded and viewed papers!

[12/2022] GeoAIR lab’s very own Sarigai successfully passed her comprehensive exams. Congratulations, Sarigai, one big step closer to Dr. Sarigai. Way to go!

[10/31/2022] GeoAIR lab’s very own Joshua received the Jesse Rossbach Memorial (JRM) Scholarship from NMGIC for his Master project about environmental justice. Well done, Joshua, way to go!

[10/10/2022] Our recently published paper, titled “Google Earth Engine and Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Comprehensive Review“, is one of the Editor’s Choice papers!  it is also TOP 1 most viewed papers among all papers published in the journal within last 6 months.

[9/5/2022] Our recently published paper, titled “Google Earth Engine and Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Comprehensive Review“, is one of the Editor’s Choice papers!  it is also TOP 2 most viewed papers among all papers published in the journal within last 6 months.

[7/6/2022] New paper led by GeoAIR lab, titled “Google Earth Engine and Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Comprehensive Review”  (https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14143253)

[6/8/2022] Dr. Liping Yang, director of the GeoAIR Lab, is very honored to be part of this great research panel at the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) 2022 symposium at Syracuse University about the past, present and future of AI in spatial decision support!

[6/2022] Dr. Liping Yang, director of the GeoAIR Lab, attended the wonderful TRELIS workshop!

[5/2022] Congratulations to Professor Alan MacEachren receiving the UCGIS 2022 Research Award! Very well-deserved! Dr. Liping Yang, the director of GeoAIR lab,  was lucky to have been directly mentored and advised by three UCGIS award recipients! Thank you for your great inspiration, Alan, Guido (2019 Carolyn Merry Mentoring Award), and Mike (2008 Research Award)! Dr. Yang will for sure pass your great research and teaching passion to current and future GeoAIR lab members! More information about the awards and current and past recipients can be found at www.ucgis.org/awards.

[5/2022] GeoAIR Lab’s very own Joshua receives the Graduate Fellowship for Community Engagement ($1,000) from the R.H. Mallory Center for Community Geography at University of New Mexico for 2022-2023.

[4/2022] NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mention (2022) went to GeoAIR Lab’s very own Joshua. Well done, Joshua, way to go!

[3/2022] Dr. Liping Yang, director of the GeoAIR Lab, is honored to be in the 2022 cohort of TRELIS (Training and Retaining Leaders in STEM-Geospatial Sciences)!!

[3/21/2022] New paper led by GeoAIR lab, titled “Towards Synoptic Water Monitoring Systems: A Review of AI Methods for Automating Water Body Detection and Water Quality Monitoring Using Remote Sensing” (https://doi.org/10.3390/s22062416)

[12/09/2021] Dr. Liping Yang, director of the GeoAIR Lab, will be giving an invited talk from the Department of Geography, University of Zurich this coming Tuesday (Dec. 14). The talk topic is, “Advancing GIScience and Remote Sensing Using GeoAI and Geovisualization”.

[10/2021] GeoAIR Lab has received a grant from NASA! It is very exciting to work with a great team from Penn State on Antarctic ice using GeoAI and Geovisualization!

[10/10/2021] Dr. Fangcao Xu from Penn State, who will join Google soon, will give a talk for our GeoAIR Lab this coming Monday (Oct. 18), titled “Multi-Geometry Atmospheric Correction and Target Spectra Retrieval from Hyperspectral Images via Deep Learning“. Look forward to it!

[08/05/2021]  Joshua, the GeoAIR Lab welcomes you and we look forward to a successful and fruitful journey with you! Welcome aboard!

[08/02/2021] Dr. Liping Yang, director of the GeoAIR Lab, will be giving an invited talk from the Department of Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne. The talk topic is, “Advancing Computer Vision and Machine Learning Using Topological Graph-Based Representations and Methods“.

[04/2021] GeoAIR Lab’s very own Sarigai has designed and implemented an interactive web map for the Murphy Lecturers—an important annual event in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, which gets featured on the department page!

[04/2021] Joshua Driscol will join GeoAIR Lab this Fall. Welcome aboard, Joshua!

[03/2021] Students in Professor Liping Yang’s course GEOG 485L/585L (Internet Mapping) created interactive, web-based maps for their final projects in Spring 2021. Explore these creative and engaging maps, which get featured on the department page!

[12/2020] Dr. Liping Yang, director of the GeoAIR Lab, will give  the oral presentation for the (active) deep learning paper , titled “Geographical feature classification from text using (active) convolutional neural networks” at the IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA) 2020  on Dec. 14!  Check out the pre-recorded video HERE.

[12/2020] Dr. Liping Yang, director of the GeoAIR Lab, will give an invited talk from CMU, titled “Advancing Patent Image Data Analysis Using Topological Graph-Based Representations and Methods” at the AI & Patent Data Workshop on Dec. 9!

      • The pre-recorded very inspiring talk video can be found at HERE, where Dr. Yang introduces her recently proposed very intuitive but very powerful new image representation to advance machine vision, followed with three applications that serve as effective demonstration of the usage of the novel image representation.

[09/2020] Dr. Liping Yang has one new paper titled “Geographical feature classification from text using (active) convolutional neural networks” got accepted by IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA) 2020!

[08/05/2020]  Sarigai and Roald, the GeoAIR Lab welcomes you and we look forward to a successful journey with you! Welcome aboard!

[06/15/2020] The DIRA workshop at CVPR 2020  (primarily organized by Dr. Liping Yang) was a great success! We want to thank ALL keynote speakers, organizers, reviewers, authors, sponsors, attendees — without you, we could not have made our DIRA workshop a successful event at CVPR 2020! As all talks are pre-recorded, everyone is able to have access to our DIRA talk videos at HERE.

[06/2020] The DIRA workshop at CVPR 2020 that Dr. Liping Yang is primary organizing  will take place on June 14! Check out the detailed schedule at HERE.

[06/2020] Dr. Liping Yang has two new papers (one led by Dr. Yang and the other advised by Dr. Yang ) published at IEEE CVPR 2020 Workshop on Diagram Image Retrieval and Analysis!

[06/2020] Dr. Liping Yang is co-organizing the ICMLA2020 Special Session: “AI with Geographic Information Systems for Social Good”.

[05/2020] Sarigai Sarigai and Roald Kern will join GeoAIR Lab this Fall. Welcome aboard, Sarigai and Roald!

[05/2020] GeoAIR Lab (Geospatial Artificial Intelligence Research and Visualization Laboratory), directed by Dr Liping Yang,  has launched!

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LY_LS_FX (AAG 2026 panel)