Huanfa Chen

Huanfa Chen is an Associate Professor in Spatial Data Science at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), University College London (UCL). He joined CASA in 2019 as a Teaching Fellow, progressing to Lecturer and Deputy Departmental Tutor in 2020. His research focuses on spatial optimization, GeoAI, and computational methods for geospatial problems, including transportation planning, public health, and urban analytics. He holds a PhD in Geographical Information Science (UCL, 2019), MSc in Cartography and GIS (Peking University, 2014), and BSc in Chemistry (Peking University, 2011). He is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and contributes to open-source geospatial software development through projects like the spopt library. His work addresses urban challenges such as equitable healthcare access, traffic safety, and pandemic response through interdisciplinary approaches.

Education background:

• PhD in Geographical Information Science (UCL, 2019)
• MSc in Cartography and GIS (Peking University, 2014)
• BSc in Chemistry (Peking University, 2011)

Research interests span spatial optimization, GeoAI, and computational geospatial methods, with applications in transportation, public safety, and urban planning. He integrates techniques like deep neural networks, meta-heuristics, and agent-based simulation. Recent work includes optimizing vaccination service accessibility and predicting traffic incident risks using graph neural networks.

Awards and recognition include contributions to open-source software (e.g., spopt) and participation in international collaborations. He advises PhD students focusing on spatial data science and GeoAI.