Jeasurk Yang, Ph.D.
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Hello, I am an assistant professor at the Department of Geography, at Chonnam National University (CNU), Gwangju, Republic of Korea.
I am a development geographer of urban poverty, integrating critical geographical theories and AI techniques. Trained in political ecology, I began my academic journey using qualitative approaches to explore urban poverty in slums. These experiences continue to shape my work using computer vision and remote sensing to examine the spatial dimensions of marginalization. With this integrated approach, I aim to challenge the invisibility of marginalized urban spaces and to support more sustainable urban futures.
Prior to joining CNU, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP) in Germany (2024-2026), working with prof. Meeyoung Cha in the Data Science for Humanity Group. I received my Ph.D. in Geography (2024) from National University of Singapore (NUS), working on urban political ecologies.
Research interests
Monitoring urban poverty with AI-driven remote sensing
(e.g., slums, refugee shelters, ...)
Understanding
North Korea's local development
(e.g., marketization in DPRK)
Criticizing urban environment with political ecology and fieldworks (e.g., political ecology of waste)
Politicizing climate change adaptation of the urban poor and marginalized groups
Posts
[May 1st, 2026] 💳 Received the CNU Activating Group Research Program
[Mar 7th, 2026] 💳 Received the CNU New Researcher Support Program (Title: A Study on the potential slumification of Ger Districts in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia)
[Feb 12th, 2026] 🎉 My review paper on Geo-AI for satellite imagery was accepted by the Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea!
[Jan 22th, 2026] 🏆 Our paper "Generalizable Slum Detection from Satellite Imagery with Mixture-of-Experts" was selected for AAAI-26 Best Paper for AI for Social Impact!
[Jan 7th, 2026] 🎉 Our paper "Sub-meter spatiotemporal mapping of slums using minimally supervised learning" was accepted in Communications Sustainability (new Nature-family journal)!
[Dec 30th, 2025] 🏫 I received an official offer for a tenure-track assistant professorship from Chonnam National University, starting from next March!
[Nov 15th, 2025]🎉 Our paper “Generalizable Slum Detection from Satellite Imagery with Mixture-of-Experts” was selected for an oral presentation at AAAI 2026, a top-tier AI conference (acceptance rate 7.5%)!
[Oct 1st, 2025]🎉 Our paper, "AI-based Ger detection reveals post-pandemic delay in informal housing progress in Mongolia" was published in npj Urban Sustainability (IF: 8.8, SCImago: 1/91 in Computational Mechanics, JCR: 2/76 in Urban Studies).
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