Chunyuan Diao

Dr. Chunyuan Diao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography & Geographic Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), part of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. He serves as Director of Graduate Studies and leads the Remote Sensing Space-Time Innovation (RSSI) Lab. His research focuses on computational remote sensing, ecosystem dynamics, and geospatial data science, integrating satellite imagery, AI, and high-performance computing to study climate change impacts, agriculture, and biodiversity.

Dr. Diao has received prestigious awards including the 2024 AAG Fellowship and the NSF CAREER Award. He teaches courses such as GGIS 477 (Intro to Remote Sensing) and GGIS 489 (Programming for GIS). His lab actively mentors students in advanced remote sensing techniques, with notable alumni like Zijun (now a tenure-track professor at UNC Wilmington) and Chishan (Frontera Computational Science Fellow).

Key research themes include multi-scale land surface phenology, intelligent agriculture, and invasive species monitoring. The RSSI Lab collaborates on large-scale projects like CropSight, leveraging street view and satellite data for crop monitoring. Dr. Diao’s work bridges remote sensing with field observations to address global environmental challenges.