Faculty
Dr. Yujie Hu
Assistant Professor
Department of Geography
Email: yujiehu@ufl.edu
Telephone: 352-294-7514
Complete CV | Personal Webpage
ResearchGate | Google Scholar | Publons | ORCID | SSRN | arXiv
Dr. Yujie Hu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, USA. He is also affiliated with the UF Informatics Institute and UF Transportation Institute. Prior to his current position, he was an Assistant Professor in the School of Geosciences at the University of South Florida from 08/2017 to 08/2019.
Dr. Hu’s research and teaching interests are urban transportation, human mobility, and accessibility. His current research focuses on three main areas: 1) relationships between people’s mobility within cities—including commuting, healthcare-seeking, and crime—and the urban built environment, 2) spatial accessibility to opportunities, such as jobs, healthcare, food, and transportation infrastructure, and how it is affected by natural hazards, and, 3) network flow analysis and optimization of travel patterns related to commuting, bike sharing, healthcare, and food delivery.
Dr. Hu is a recipient of the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Awards from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU). His research has been supported by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU), Southeastern Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (SASHTO), and the American Association of Geographers (AAG). He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications and Southeastern Geographer.
Students
Cora Crytzer
Undergraduate researcher
I am currently a junior at the University of Florida pursuing a degree in economics and geography. Recently, I discovered my passion for geography, and I am so excited to be a part of the GeoNAVI Lab. Currently, I am interested in spatial mobility as it relates to caregivers in the healthcare field. I am from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but I love living in Florida for school. In my free time, I serve as a director within my sorority, Delta Delta Delta, and really love going to Gators sporting events.
Cade Gouin
Master’s student
Born and raised in and around Gainesville my whole life, I have much love for my alma mater, home of the Gators–the University of Florida. A 2019 graduate of UF’s School of Forest Resources and Conservation BS program, I have a deep appreciation for the natural world we live in, and the adventures and lessons it can give us. My studies in natural resources introduced me to the amazing field of Geographic Information Systems, and I quickly recognized its potential value in many industries and research interests. It didn’t take long to decide that I wanted to immerse myself deeper into the world of Geography, and thus I am very excited to be a part of the GeoNAVI lab. Some of my research interests include crime–especially crime committed by the police–public health, and identifying social inequities in those areas and beyond. In my free time I love longboarding, exploring and traveling, producing music, playing video games, flying my camera drone, and working on side hustles.
Zeyu He
PhD student
I was born and raised in Xi’an, China and I am very passionate about sports and a healthy lifestyle. I received my B.S. in Geographic Information Science from Chang’an University and my M.S. in Cartography and GIS from Lanzhou University. I have research experience in remote sensing and geographic data mining. Now at the PhD level, my research will focus on mining geographic data, especially on exploring human activity patterns. I believe that various data with location information can reflect people’s different travel patterns very well. Thus, we can perceive and plan the layout of the city to better serve people’s life. This is also the relevance of geography, to better understand and transform the environment we live in. Besides, as a GISer, I am more than happy to base my research on real-life problems rather than just a bunch of boring words.
Yue Jing
PhD student
I was born and raised in Chengdu, China. I’m a cat person and obsessed with collecting posters. I earned a B.S. in Geography from Beijing Normal University (2015) and a M.S. in Human Geography from the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2018), with a focus on transport geography. I also have working experience as an urban planner in Chengdu Institute of Planning & Design. As a geography student as well as an urban planner, I have enduring interests in studying how transportation systems, land use, and travel behaviors are interrelated. My previous research experiences revolve around studying the spatial interactions on different dimensions through the lens of traffic flow datasets, sparkling my interests in developing and applying data-driven approaches in transpotation studies. For my PhD study, I’m going to take a closer look at the transportation-related social exclusion based on high resolution spatiotemporal big data. Also, I am interested in geo-visualiztion technologies and hope to tell good stories using maps!
Naomi Loveridge
Master’s student
I was born and raised in Melbourne, Florida. I attended UF as an undergraduate and completed a Bachelor’s in Geography with a Minor in Urban and Regional Planning. I enjoy traveling and learning about the history of different cities. My research interests are primarily in transportation planning, environmental planning and land use change. I have gained two years of valuable work experience as a GIS technician which has allowed me to advance my skills in mapping and geospatial analysis. To move further in my career, I want the opportunity to research the issues cities face with poorly designed transportation and the negative impacts it has on commuters, pedestrians, and bicyclists. Throughout my time living in Gainesville for the past four years, I have witnessed great concern for road safety. As the city’s population continues to grow, there have been increased reports of accidents involving automobiles and pedestrians. By utilizing geospatial data, I seek to determine solutions for ways in which rapidly expanding cities can adapt and improve their transportation networks.
Jinpeng Wang
Master’s student
I was born and raised in Chengdu, Sichuan in China. I am a big fan of maps and have them hanging all over the walls in my room. I earned my Bachelor’s degree at The Ohio State University, with a primary major in Geographic Information Science and second major in Physical Geography. I also had two minors, Computer Science and History. My research interests are in GIS, transportation and urban studies. I aim to apply my GIS and programming skills learned in my undergrad studies and the skills I will learn in my graduate career. My previous projects include analyzing the shrinking of Aral Sea using remote sensing images, habitat analysis of the endangered species of black-footed ferret in the US, developing plug-ins for QGIS and so on. After spending four years in the US as an undergrad student, I got to know better about the transportation system of the country. I hope to learn more about and contribute to the research in the field of transportation and generally geography.
Yihe Yang
PhD student
I was born and raised in a ‘small’ city in southwest China called Liuzhou. I love my hometown deeply as started to appreciate how precious it is to be around family. I obtained my Bachelor’s degree from Shaanxi Normal University, China, and my Master’s degree from the University of Toledo, Ohio. My research focuses on studying health-seeking behavior and geographic utilization of healthcare facilities using GIS and spatial statistics, and I’m very excited about this topic.
Lab Alumni
Bailey Glover, Hannah Litwak, Yousra Jatt