Yang Shao

Yang Shao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Virginia Tech's College of Natural Resources and Environment. He specializes in remote sensing, GIS, and statistical modeling to study land use/cover change and watershed dynamics. His work integrates machine learning algorithms for high-accuracy land cover mapping and near-real-time environmental monitoring. Shao currently directs the Geospatial and Environmental Analysis (GEA) Ph.D. program and teaches courses in advanced geospatial modeling and programming. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2007), and MS/B.S. degrees from Nanjing University (2001/1997).

Research Interests:

• Remote sensing image processing & machine learning
• Land use/cover change dynamics
• Urban environmental modeling (e.g., stormwater/runoff)
• Ecohydrological process simulation
• GIS-based spatial analysis

Grant Highlights:

• $500K US Army Corps study on hurricane surge characterization
• $150K DEQ-funded harmful algal bloom analysis
• World Resources Institute project mapping school bus depots using Google Earth Engine

Advising: Supervised 15+ graduate students in land change modeling, remote sensing applications, and environmental GIS since 2012. Current advisees include Ozzy Campos (PhD) and Jack Tolar (MS).

Labs/Teams: Active member of Virginia Tech's Center for Geospatial Information Technology, leading projects in urban environmental systems analysis and geospatial data science.