Jiannan Cai

Dr. Jiannan Cai is an Associate Professor in the College of Surveying and Geo-Informatics at Tongji University. Before joining Tongji University, he was an RGC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute of Space and Earth Information Science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. in GIScience and B.E. in Surveying and Mapping Engineering from Central South University. He was a visiting Ph.D. scholar in the Spatial Computing Research Group at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

His research lies at the intersection of geospatial data science, urban computing and computational social science, with special attention to human mobility and environmental health. He has defined a series of new geospatial patterns to represent complex spatiotemporal patterns underlying urban environments and human activities. His research aims to enhance the interpretability and reliability of discovered geospatial patterns by explicitly modeling the characteristics of geographic phenomena (e.g., spatial autocorrelation, heterogeneity, and scale dependency). His methods have been utilized across various smart-city applications, such as mining human mobility patterns, revealing mobility-based social integration patterns, as well as assessing individual environmental exposures and health effects. His work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals in GIS, geography, and environmental science, including the International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Environmental Science & Technology, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Geographical Analysis, and others.

Research Interests

Geospatial Data Science, Urban Computing, Computational Social Science, Human Mobility, Environmental Health

Work Experience

• Feb. 2025 - Current, Associate Professor, College of Surveying and Geo-Informatics, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

• Sep. 2020 – Dec. 2024, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Education

• Mar. 2018 – Feb. 2019, Ph.D. Visiting Scholar, Computer Science, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Minneapolis, USA

• Sep. 2014 – Dec. 2019, Ph.D., Cartography and Geographical Information Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, China

• Sep. 2010 – Jun. 2014, B.E., Surveying and Mapping Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, China