Caglar Koylu

Caglar Koylu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geographical and Sustainability Sciences at the University of Iowa's School of Earth, Environment, and Sustainability. He directs the Geo-Social Lab where he leads research at the intersection of GIScience, network science, cartography, and visualization with applications in human mobility, migration, population geography, public health, and social vulnerability.

His educational background includes a PhD from the University of South Carolina. He teaches foundational courses in GIS, geospatial programming, geographic visualization, and spatial analysis. His research program focuses on developing innovative computational and visual tools to analyze massive geospatial data and geo-social networks.

Koylu's research interests span GIScience, cartography, visualization, spatiotemporal analysis, human mobility and migration, and population-scale kinship networks. His work combines network science, machine learning, and GeoAI approaches to understand complex spatial-social systems. Recent projects include analyzing historical migration patterns using population-scale family trees and developing tools for visualizing spatial flows.

His publications reveal a strong focus on methodological innovation in flow mapping, spatial interaction analysis, and geovisual analytics, with applications spanning migration studies, public health, social media analysis, and disaster management. He has developed FlowMapper.org, a web-based tool for visualizing and analyzing flows across space-time.

Among his notable recognitions, Koylu was elected Vice President of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CaGIS) in 2023. His students have received multiple awards including the CaGIS Doctoral Scholarship Award.

He currently advises several graduate students including Maryam Torkashvand (PhD), Jinyi Cai (PhD), and Loretta Nwajiaku (MA). His lab has successfully graduated PhD students including Hoeyun Kwon (2023) and Geng Tian (MA, 2021).

Koylu secures substantial research funding, currently serving as Principal Investigator on an NSF grant ($477,734) for population-scale kinship networks research and as Co-PI on an NIH grant ($1.18 million) for cancer risk mapping. His lab provides research experiences for undergraduate and high school students through the Secondary Student Training Program.