Dr. Leiqiu Hu joined the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2016. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in geography from Beijing Normal University, China in 2008, the M.Sc. in remote sensing and GIS from the Chinese Academics of Sciences in 2011, and her 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 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.

Dr. Cai obtained her bachelor’s degree from Wuhan University, China in 2009, worked in a Joint-PH.D. program at Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Germany (Nov, 2012-Nov, 2013), and received her Ph.D. degree in the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2014. Before her Post-Doctoral researcher position at UAH, she had her faculty position at Chinese Academy of Sciences as an Assistant Professor (July, 2014 – March, 2024), and she worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara, US (Oct, 2017 - Oct, 2018) as a visiting scholar. Her research focuses on the land-atmosphere-human interactions and the impacts of climate change and ecohydrological variability, including attributing ecohydrological variability to climate and anthropogenic effects, relating threatened biodiversity to climate and habitat change, and investigating the heterogeneous surface environment associated with urbanization ecosystems 

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.