Fangzheng Lyu

Fangzheng Lyu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), affiliated with the College of Natural Resources and Environment. His research focuses on advancing GIScience, geospatial data science, and computational methods to address complex urban and environmental challenges using big data. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2024), an M.S. from the same institution (2021), and a B.E. from the University of Hong Kong (2018).

Dr. Lyu's expertise includes geospatial data science, cyberGIS, urban informatics, and geospatial AI. His work spans three core areas: (1) urban dynamics modeling using machine learning and cyberGIS, (2) scalable spatial algorithms for remote sensing and big data analysis, and (3) democratizing access to advanced geospatial cyberinfrastructure. He teaches courses such as Principles of GIS, Geospatial Data Science, and Spatial Data Science at Virginia Tech.

His research has been published in leading journals like International Journal of Geographical Information Science, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, and Sustainability. Notable contributions include frameworks for urban heat island prediction, spatiotemporal image fusion models (e.g., Multi-stream STGAN), and methods for analyzing spatial accessibility during public health crises.

Dr. Lyu actively contributes to interdisciplinary initiatives, including the Center for Geospatial Information Technology at Virginia Tech. His work emphasizes reproducibility and collaboration, with a focus on bridging geospatial research and education through cyberGIS platforms like CyberGIS-Jupyter. He has received funding for proposals integrating geospatial technologies with urban sensing and epidemiological modeling.