GEAR Lab members had an inspiring and productive week at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) 2026 Annual Meeting, with strong participation in symposium organization, panel discussions, research presentations, student awards, and specialty group leadership. A major highlight was the inaugural AAG GIScience for Human Experience and Responsibility (GISER) Symposium, co-organized by Dr. Lei Zou with Drs. Yuhao Kang, Jiaxin Feng, Hoeyun Kwon, Armita Kar, Yue Lin, Hongyu

GEAR Lab is delighted to congratulate Yifan Yang and Zongrong (Jasper) Li on receiving multiple honors from the American Association of Geographers (AAG) in 2026. Yifan Yang received 2nd Place in the AAG GIScience Specialty Group Student Honors Paper Competition, recognizing the quality and contribution of his research in GIScience and geospatial AI. Yifan was also awarded the AAG International Geographic Information Fund (IGIF) Scholarship Award, which provides $1,200 in sup

GEAR Lab is pleased to congratulate Yifan Yang and Zongrong (Jasper) Li on their recent leadership appointments within the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Specialty Groups. Yifan Yang will serve as Student Co-Director of the Remote Sensing Specialty Group, American Association of Geographers, from 2025 to 2027, and Student Co-Director of the Hazards, Risks, and Disasters Specialty Group, American Association of Geographers, from 2025 to 2027. These appointments refl

GEAR Lab is pleased to share a new publication in Transactions in Urban Data, Science, and Technology by Lei Zou, Binbin Lin, Thiagarajan Ramakrishnan, and Mingzheng Yang. The paper, titled “Spatiotemporal Disparities of Social-Behavioral Dynamics During Pandemics: Insights from Multi-Source Big Data in Major U.S. Cities,” examines how public awareness, sentiment, mobility, policy responses, and health outcomes changed across space and time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using

GEAR Lab is pleased to share a new publication in Journal of Environmental Management by Xiang Li, Yi Qiang, Xiao Huang, Lei Zou, and Heng Cai. The paper, titled “Natural Disasters and Human Migration in the United States: Insights from Automated Machine Learning and Explainable AI,” examines how major natural disasters are associated with human migration patterns across the contiguous United States. Focusing on floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and tornadoes from 2000 to 2020,

GEAR Lab is pleased to share a new publication in Urban Informatics by Xinyue Ye, Wenjing Gong, Yifan Yang, Lei Zou, Zhengzhong Tu, Xiao Huang, Zhenlong Li, Huan Ning, and Ling Wu. The paper, titled “Towards Agentic Urban Digital Twins (AUDiTs): Advancing New Urban Science through Human-AI Co-Learning Agents,” introduces Agentic Urban Digital Twins as a research agenda for the next generation of urban digital twin systems. The work explores how large language models, multimod

GEAR Lab is pleased to share a new publication in Climate by Dingding Ren, Galen Newman, Robert D. Brown, Dongying Li, and Lei Zou. The paper, titled “Determining the Impact of Urban Vacant and Abandoned Land on Land Surface Temperatures in Socially Vulnerable Communities in Houston,” investigates how different forms of vacant and abandoned urban land relate to land surface temperature in socially vulnerable neighborhoods. Focusing on Houston, Texas, the study combines spatia

GEAR Lab is pleased to share a new publication in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems by Debayan Mandal, Lei Zou, Abhinav Wadhwa, Rohan Singh Wilkho, Zhenhang Cai, Bing Zhou, Xinyue Ye, Galen Newman, Nasir Gharaibeh, and Burak Güneralp. The paper, titled “FlowsDT: A Geospatial Digital Twin for Navigating Urban Flood Dynamics,” introduces FlowsDT-Galveston, a geospatial digital twin framework designed to model and visualize urban flood dynamics at a hyperlocal scale. Usin

Warm congratulations to Dr. Mingzheng Yang on successfully passing his final Ph.D. dissertation defense and completing an important milestone in his doctoral journey. Congratulations to Dr. Mingzheng Yang on successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation at Texas A&M University. Dr. Yang’s dissertation, titled “Deciphering the Social-Environmental Effects on Biological Rhythm Disorders through Spatial Data Science,” explores how social and environmental conditions are connecte

We are proud to announce that Dr. Lei Zou has been selected as a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Gulf Research Program Early Career Research Fellow . He will be joining the Human Health and Community Resilience Track . This prestigious fellowship supports emerging scientific leaders as they take on risks and pursue nontraditional research that advances science at the intersection of human health, environmental resources, and offshore energy s

Congratulations to Joynal Abedin 🌎 on successfully completing his Ph.D. from Texas A&M Department of Geography! In Fall 2025, Joynal has joined the Department of Geography at Ohio University as an Assistant Professor of Instruction 🎉 Dr. Lei Zou hooding Dr. Joynal Abedin during the graduation ceremony Dr. Lei Zou (left) and Dr. Joynal Abedin (right) at the Fall 2025 Texas A&M Commencement Ceremony Joynal is the fourth Ph.D. graduate from the GEAR Lab. With a deep commitmen

We are delighted to share that Yifan Yang has been awarded the Environment and Sustainability Graduate Fellow Award for his research proposal, “Bridging the Gap from Remote Sensing to Street View: Human-Centered Visual Perception for Environmental Sustainability.” Note: The illustration above was generated using AI and is intended solely for visual communication and promotional purposes for this post. This fellowship recognizes Yifan’s innovative vision in connecting satel

We are excited to announce that Mingzheng Yang has won 🥇 First Place in the 2025 GIS Day Graduate Student Paper Competition with his outstanding presentation, “Biological Rhythm Through the Lens of GIScience: Opportunities and Applications.” His work showcases the innovative spirit and expanding possibilities of GIScience, offering fresh insights into biological rhythms through geospatial analysis. 🌍✨ Biological Rhythm Through the Lens of GIScience – GIS Day 2025 Present

We are pleased to share a new peer-reviewed publication in which GEAR Lab member Dr. Lei Zou contributed as a co-author: 🎯 “Fine-tuned large language models for natech analytics: Evidence from two decades of Texas chemical emission incidents” 🔍 Study Overview Natural-hazard-triggered technological accidents ( Natechs ) remain a significant yet under-examined risk for chemical process industries. Although decades of incident records exist, they are largely unstructured and

We are thrilled to share that Dr. Bing Zhou (lead author), Dr. Lei Zou , Mingzheng Yang , Binbin Lin , Debayan Mandal , Joynal Abedin , Heng Cai , Shuiwang Ji , Andrew Klein , and Hao Tian have published a new paper: 🎯 “Rapid Disaster Response and Damage Estimation with Social Media and Pretrained Large Language Models: Insights from Multiple Hurricanes” 🔍 Study Overview This study explores how social media , especially X (formerly Twitter) , can support fast and reliab

The GEAR Lab is delighted to share that Joynal Abedin successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation on Monday, October 20th, 2025. His dissertation, “ Modeling the Dynamics of Climatic and Environmental Hazard Risks by Leveraging Geospatial Data Science ,” sits at the intersection of urban geography, disaster resilience, and sustainable planning. His research quantitatively assessed multi-scale community exposure and risk to flooding and air pollution in both developing and d

The GEAR Lab at Texas A&M University was delighted to host Dr. Hui Luan , a spatial epidemiologist and spatial data scientist from UT Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW), for an invited talk focusing on uncertainty in spatiotemporal statistical modeling . His visit sparked vibrant discussions on cutting-edge spatial health research and methodological innovation. Dr. Luan’s talk provided an in-depth look at how uncertainty influences the analysis and interpretation of spatiotem

On November 10, 2025, the Department of Geography at Texas A&M University had the great honor of hosting Dr. Michael F. Goodchild, Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. During his visit, Dr. Goodchild engaged in stimulating discussions with faculty and graduate students, focusing on topics such as Cartography, Human-environment interactions, and Spatial representation. His

We are delighted to share that Rohan has been selected as the Communication Director for the AAG Specialty Group on Geographic...

On September 12-14, 2025, Dr. Lei Zou was invited to deliver a featured talk at the ISU-NISS Conference on AI and Statistics , held at...

We are excited to welcome Mitch and Ritika , who joined GEAR Lab as senior undergraduates at Texas A&M University this year! 🎉 Mitch...

We are delighted to share that Mingzheng Yang has successfully passed his Ph.D. proposal defense and is now officially a Ph.D....

The GEAR Lab had a remarkable presence at the International Cartographic Conference (ICC) 2025 in Vancouver, Canada. Our members...

We are excited to welcome Jasper , who joined GEAR lab this Fall 2025! 🎉 Zongrong (Jasper) Li is a Ph.D. student in Geography at Texas...

We are thrilled to share that Yifan Yang (lead author) and Dr. Lei Zou , along with Bing Zhou, Daoyang Li, Binbin Lin, Joynal Abedin,...

We are pleased to share a new publication co-authored by Bing Zhou , Binbin Lin , Lei Zou , Mingzheng Yang , Hao Tian , and Heng Cai ,...

We are excited to announce that Joynal Abedin , Ph.D. candidate in the GEAR Lab at Texas A&M, has been awarded the prestigious 2025 CaGIS...

We are thrilled to share that Dr. Bing Zhou , a former Ph.D. graduate from the GEAR Lab, will be joining the University of Tennessee,...

Dr. Lei Zou has co-authored a new paper titled “ Toward Coastal Infrastructure Resiliency: An AI-Enabled Decision Support Framework for...

Dr. Lei Zou was invited to give a talk at the Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU) Conference , presenting on “ Geospatial Big Data and AI for...

We’re excited to share that Yifan Yang , a Ph.D. student in the GEAR Lab, has been selected as one of the 2025–2026 Data Science Student...

We are delighted to share that Joynal Abedin , a Ph.D. candidate in the GEAR Lab, has been awarded the 2025 Excellence in Research Award...