Dr. Leiqiu Hu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Earth Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville since 2016. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in geography from Beijing Normal University, China in 2008, and the M.Sc. in remote sensing and GIS from the Chinese Academics of Sciences in 2011, and Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Kansas in 2014. Before her faculty position at UAH, she received a two-year postdoc fellowship in the Advanced Study Program at National Center for Atmospheric Research, where her research focuses on urban climatology studies from satellite observations. Dr. Hu’s research has centered on understanding the land-atmosphere-human interactions in the urban systems across multiple temporal and spatial scales using traditional and newly emerging observational and modeling techniques. Her group aims to address critical environmental challenges in both urban and agricultural systems.

She obtained an MS in Tropical Hydrogeology and Environmental Engineering (2018) from Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, and holds a BS in Environmental Science (2013) from the University of Science, Vietnam National University of Hochiminh City (VNU-HCM).

She had worked as a Researcher at the Department of Environmental Informatics, Institute for Environment and Resources, VNU-HCM (2013 – 2015) and as a Student Assistant at European Institute for Energy Research (EIfER), Karlsruhe, Germany (2017 – 2018).

Her research experience has been focused on the implementation of Remote Sensing and GIS technologies on environmental and urban systems. Another interest she would like to pursue is the implementation of nature-based solutions on mitigating the extreme heat phenomenon Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. She has practical experience in conducting field surveys on ground-surface water monitoring, land cover patterns detection and conception/deployment of ground-based observations using low-cost sensors.

He obtained a B.S. in Atmospheric Science with a minor in Mathematics (2022) from the University of Kansas.

Before coming to UAH, he has previously worked as an Undergraduate Research Assistant in the Department of Geography and Atmospheric Science at the University of Kansas (2020-2022) and as a Student Research Intern at the Kansas Mesonet in the Department of Agronomy at Kansas State University (May 2022-August 2022).

His previous research experience includes analyses of significant heat events and their impacts on urban vs. non-urban areas using remote sensing techniques, creating a wildfire climatology to better understand fire and atmospheric correlations that enhance a fire season to create an improved response, and a statistics-based project.

His UAH research will focus primarily on community-level heat disparities from Earth observational data.