Faculty Profile for Dr. Yihong Yuan

profile photo for Dr. Yihong Yuan
Dr. Yihong Yuan
Associate Professor — Dept of Geography & Environmntl Studies
Program Faculty — Dept of Geography & Environmntl Studies
Program Faculty — Dept of Geography & Environmntl Studies
ELA 322
phone: (512) 245-3208
Scholarly/Creative Work
Awards
Grants
Service

Biography Section

Biography and Education

 Ph.D. in Geography (Geographic Information Science), University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, 2013
(Specialization: Big data analytics, human mobility modeling, spatio-temporal data mining, and knowledge discovery)

M.A. in Statistics, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, 2013

B.S. in Geographic Information System, Peking University, China, 2009

Teaching Interests

 Geographic Information Science; Big Geodata and Urban Computing; Front-end and Back-end Programming

Research Interests

 Spatial-temporal Data Mining; Travel Behavior Modeling; Machine Learning; Geocomputation

Selected Scholarly/Creative Work

  • Yuan, Y., Wang, P., McKenzie, G., Sun, M., Xu, Y., & Priyanka. (2025). Human mobility in the post-pandemic world. In Urban Human Mobility-Practices, Analytics, and Strategies for Smart Cities (pp. 221–235). CRC Press.
  • Yuan, Y., & Wylie, A. G. (2024). Comparing machine learning and time series approaches in predictive modeling of urban fire incidents: a case study of Austin, Texas. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 13.
  • Wang, P., & Yuan, Y. (2024). Analyzing key factors influencing human mobility before and during COVID-19 with explainable machine learning. Transactions in GIS, 29(1), e13271.
  • Bobo, R. T., Chow, T. K. E., & Yuan, Y. (2024). Floor-level occupancy estimation of a multi-story building using coarse Wi-Fi data. Papers in Applied Geography, 1–27. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/23754931.2024.2407069
  • Jiang, Y., Yuan, Y., & Han, S. Y. (2024). An entropy-based measurement for understanding origin-destination trip distributions: a case study of New York City taxis. Big Earth Data, 8, 673--702. https://doi.org/10.1080/20964471.2024.2363548

Selected Awards

  • Award / Honor Recipient: Best Paper for Map Use/Information Graphics, Applied Geography Conference. 2022
  • Award / Honor Nominee: Top 20 Finalist, Global Young Scientist in GIScience, The 3rd Global Young Scientist Forum. 2022
  • Award / Honor Recipient: Achievement Award for Excellence in Teaching, College of Liberal Arts, Texas State University. 2021
  • Award / Honor Recipient: Achievement in GIS Award, Society for Geographic Information Science. 2020
  • Award / Honor Recipient: Richard Wayne Simmons Geography Advocate Award. 2019

Selected Grants

  • Yuan, Yihong (Principal). Advancing Spatial Analytical Methods through the Integration of Explainable Machine Learning, Texas State University, $3000. (Submitted: November 2024, Funded: December 2024 - December 2025). Grant.
  • Luo, Xiaohua (Principal), Wang, Feng (Co-Principal), Yuan, Yihong (Co-Principal). National Summer Transportation Institute, Federal Highway Administration, Federal, $64760. (Submitted: September 2024, Funded: December 2024 - September 2025). Grant.
  • Yuan, Yihong (Principal), Wang, Feng (Co-Principal). Modeling the Changes in Urban Mobility Patterns during COVID-19, Texas State Center for Analytics and Data Science, Texas State University, $6000. (Submitted: December 2023, Funded: January 2024 - February 2025). Grant.
  • Yuan, Yihong (Principal), Jensen, Jennifer (Co-Principal). Developing a Web Mapping System for Election Precinct Search, Comal County Democrats, Private / Foundation / Corporate, $9989. (Submitted: April 2023, Funded: June 2023 - November 2024). Grant.
  • Luo, Xiaohua (Principal), Wang, Feng (Co-Principal), Yuan, Yihong (Co-Principal), Li, Liang (Co-Principal). National Summer Transportation Institute, Federal Highway Administration, Federal, $64000. (Submitted: September 2022, Funded: June 2023 - October 2023). Grant.

Selected Service Activities

Member
Executive Board of Texas State Center for Analytics and Data Science
2024-Present
Reviewer / Referee
National Science Foundation, Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation Division
2019-Present
Chair
GESSRS / PANGEA Committee
2023-2025
Member
Quality Enhancement Committee
2019-2021
Other
Board Member of Director, Chinese Professional in Geographic Information Systems
2016-2018