Biography and education
Dr. Su Han is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Texas State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Geography through the joint doctoral program between San Diego State University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. She also holds an M.S. in Geography and Geographic Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she majored in Geography and minored in Computer Science.
Her research interests include spatial data science, social media analytics, health GIS, web-based GIS, GIS-based decision support systems, CyberGIS, cartography, geovisualization, geovisual analytics, and neighborhood dynamics. Her current research focuses on environmental justice and climate change, specifically exploring disparities in human mobility across different socioeconomic and demographic groups during heatwaves. Additionally, she investigates evacuation-related travel patterns during the Palisades and Eaton wildfires using millions of foot traffic data points collected from mobile apps. Her work also examines accessibility to shelters during wildfire events.
Dr. Han is also the core developer and maintainer of CyberGIS-Vis, an open-source software tool for interactive geospatial visualization and scalable visual analytics.
Her research interests include spatial data science, social media analytics, health GIS, web-based GIS, GIS-based decision support systems, CyberGIS, cartography, geovisualization, geovisual analytics, and neighborhood dynamics. Her current research focuses on environmental justice and climate change, specifically exploring disparities in human mobility across different socioeconomic and demographic groups during heatwaves. Additionally, she investigates evacuation-related travel patterns during the Palisades and Eaton wildfires using millions of foot traffic data points collected from mobile apps. Her work also examines accessibility to shelters during wildfire events.
Dr. Han is also the core developer and maintainer of CyberGIS-Vis, an open-source software tool for interactive geospatial visualization and scalable visual analytics.
Teaching Interests
Research Interests
Featured scholarly/creative works
- 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
- Gu, X., Liu, L., Han, S. Y., Lan, M., Zhou, H., Chen, D., & Su, Z. (2025). The impact of changing ambient population composition on crime during COVID-19 lockdowns. Applied Geography.
- Gu, X., Han, S. Y., Myint, S. W., Cho, E., & Zhu, Y. (n.d.). Exploring Dynamic Human Mobility of Diverse Social Groups Under Heat Conditions: A Simulation-Based Approach.
- Han, S. Y., Kim, J., Jiang, Y., Kang, J.-Y., Han, C., Michels, A., & Wang, S. (n.d.). CyberGIS-Vis for Democratizing Access to Scalable Spatiotemporal Geovisual Analytics: A Case Study of COVID-19. https://doi.org/https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3681777.3698474
- Han, S. Y., Kang, J.-Y., Lyu, F., Baig, F., Smilovsky, D., Park, J., & Wang, S. (2023). A cyberGIS approach to exploring neighborhood-level social vulnerability for disaster risk management. Transactions in GIS, 00, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/tgis.13106
Featured service activities
- Member
Alumni Committee
- Reviewer / Referee
The Professional Geographer
- Reviewer / Referee
Big Earth Data
- Reviewer / Referee
Discover Public Health
- Member
Evaluation Committee
- Reviewer / Referee
Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics (JCGS)