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 urban 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 

Janak received an MSc. in Geospatial Technologies (March 2021) from Universidade Nova de Lisboa Portugal and partnered by Universitat Jaume I Spain and Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster Germany under Erasmus Mundus Scholarship-2019. Before joining UAH as PhD student for Fall 2024, he had worked as Survey Officer under Government of Nepal (2015 - 2024). During his tenure, he was associated with projects on Mt. Everest Height Measurement, LiDAR Surveying for pre-feasibility study of the Cable Car project (83.65km), and as a key resource employee for the implementation of Nepal Land Information System. He also worked as Teaching Assistant at Kathmandu University, Nepal (2014-2015). He completed his undergraduate degree in Geomatics Engineering from Kathmandu University (2014). 

His research interests are in the application of remote sensing and geospatial technologies to address real world problems, especially related to climate and environment.