News & Updates

We are pleased to share that Siqi Zhou, a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M University, has received the 2026 Geography Graduate Student Enhancement Scholarship from the Department of Geography. This competitive scholarship supports graduate students in advancing their academic and research activities. Congratulations to Siqi on this well-deserved achievement!

We are pleased to share that Ph.D. student Hao Tian’s recent work, “BEACON: Behavioral and Semantic Enrichment of AlphaEarth Embeddings through Tri-Modal Contrastive Learning,” has been accepted to ACM SIGSPATIAL 2026. The study introduces BEACON, a tri-modal contrastive learning framework that incorporates human behavioral and semantic information into Earth observation embeddings to better represent urban environments and human activities. Congratulations to Hao!

We are pleased to share that Hao Tian, a Ph.D. student of the City Analytics & Informatics Lab, has been selected as a Data Science Student Ambassador by the Texas A&M Institute of Data Science (TAMIDS). The TAMIDS Data Science Student Ambassador Program is a competitive university-wide initiative that empowers Ph.D. students to promote data science literacy and interdisciplinary collaboration across Texas A&M. As an Ambassador, Hao will help connect geospatial science and da

Ph.D. student Hao Tian recently participated in two back-to-back international conferences, the International Symposium on Spatiotemporal Data Science (ISSDS 2026) and the 2026 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 2026), sharing the lab’s recent work on Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and deep learning for urban traffic monitoring and analysis. At ISSDS 2026, Hao gave an oral presentation titled “Leveraging Deep Learning and Distributed Acoust

Congratulations to Hao Tian on receiving a 2026 Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CaGIS) Student Research Scholarship. Hao was recognized at the Ph.D. level for his outstanding research achievements and potential in cartography and geographic information science. The CaGIS Student Research Scholarship is a nationally competitive award that recognizes outstanding graduate students demonstrating excellence and promise in cartography and GIScience research. Here is

In early June, Dr. Heng Cai took part in a gathering organized by the NASA Disasters Program that brought together experts and practitioners who are dedicated to improving disaster science and community resilience. Dr. Cai attended the meeting as the PI of the HeatSMART project. The 2026 NASA Disasters Science Team Meeting in Portland, Oregon

CAI Lab is pleased to announce a new publication led by Dr. Binbin Lin. The article, “Quantifying Healthcare Visitation Disruptions Using Mobile Phone Location Data During Disasters: A Case Study of Hurricane Beryl,” has been published in Progress in Disaster Science. Using Hurricane Beryl (2024) as a case study, this research leverages large-scale mobile phone location data to examine visitation patterns across more than 4,000 healthcare facilities in Harris County, Texas. B

We’re excited to share that Ph.D. student Hao Tian has recently received two recognitions for his research contributions in GIScience, social and seismic sensing, and urban human dynamics. Hao was selected as a recipient of the 2026 Environment & Sustainability Initiative (ESI) Graduate Fellow Award, receiving $2,500 in research funding to support his project, “AI-Driven Seismic Sensing of Human Activity Disruptions During Extreme Weather Events.” The project explores how art

A new article led by Ph.D. student Hao Tian titled “ From seismic signals to urban sensing: Leveraging ambient seismic noise to sense human activity disruptions in extreme weather events ,” was recently published in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems (CEUS) . Congratulations! This study explores whether existing seismic networks, originally designed for Earth monitoring, can be repurposed as a continuous, passive, and resilient urban sensing system. Using the Dallas-For

We are delighted to share that Palash Chandra Das , a Ph.D. student in the CAI Lab, has successfully passed his preliminary examination on April 4, 2026 . His dissertation research, titled "DYNAMIC-RESILIENCE: Spatiotemporal Human Mobility Dynamics for Urban Disaster Resilience Assessment," develops a dynamic analytical framework that leverages large-scale human mobility data to uncover patterns of urban disruption and recovery, model evolving population distributions, and

We are pleased to share that Hao Tian , a Ph.D. student in the CAI Lab, received two recognitions at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). Hao was awarded Second Place in the Remote Sensing Specialty Group Student Paper Competition for his presentation titled “Leveraging Deep Learning and Distributed Acoustic Sensing for Real-Time Traffic Monitoring”. In addition, he received the International Geographic Information Fund ( IGIF ) Student

The CAI Lab demonstrated a strong presence at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) in San Francisco, contributing through session organization, research presentations, and academic engagement. Lab members played key roles in organizing multiple sessions: GISER Symposium: Sensing Urban Human Dynamics Through Multi-Source Insights (Part I & II) ( Organizers: Hao Tian, Dr. Heng Cai, Siqi Zhou) GISER Symposium: Human-Environment Interactions

We are pleased to share that Dr. Heng Cai and Hao Tian have been elected as Director and Student Director , respectively, of the AAG Cyberinfrastructure Specialty Group (CISG) for 2026. CISG focuses on advancing cyberinfrastructure in geography, including data-intensive geospatial analytics, computational methods, and interdisciplinary collaboration. We congratulate Dr. Cai and Hao on this achievement and are proud to see CAI Lab members contributing to the CISG community

Ph.D. student Hao Tian recently presented his research at the Texas A&M Institute of Data Science (TAMIDS) Ambassador Seminar titled “From Signals to Society: Data Science for Understanding the Earth and Human Dynamics.” In his talk, “Can Seismic Signals Decode Human Behavior? Toward a Data-Driven Understanding of Human Dynamics,” Hao introduced a novel approach that leverages seismic sensing to capture collective human activity. By interpreting ambient seismic noise recor

The Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CaGIS) has announced the results of its recent board election. We are pleased to share that Heng Cai , director of the GIResilience Lab, has been elected to the CaGIS Board of Directors for a four-year term (Spring 2026–Spring 2030) . Board members are responsible for guiding the Society’s strategic direction and supporting activities related to cartographic scholarship, education, professional practice, conferences, and pub

Hao Tian , Ph.D. student in the GIResilience Lab, has been selected as a 2026 International Geographic Information Fund (IGIF) Student Paper Award recipient by the American Association of Geographers (AAG) . This Award recognizes outstanding student papers in geographic information science and spatial analysis presented at national or international conferences. Awardees will be honored at the upcoming AAG Annual Meeting in San Francisco (March 16-21, 2026). Congratulations t

We are pleased to share that Siqi Zhou , a Ph.D. student in the GIResilience Lab, has been awarded the Lechner Graduate Scholarship from the College of Arts & Sciences of Texas A&M University for the 2025–2026 academic year . The scholarship, in the amount of $1,000 , is funded through the Graduate and Professional School Lechner Graduate Grant Program, endowed by the Walter W. Lechner Estate. The award is intended to support new incoming graduate students at Texas A&M Unive

Hao Tian, a Ph.D. student in the GIResilience Lab, presented his research at the Fall 2025 Colloquium hosted by the Department of Geography on November 14. His talk, “Integrating Social and Seismic Sensing: Multi-Source Insights into Urban Human Dynamics”, introduced his recent work combining mobile phone location data and ambient seismic signals to analyze human activity patterns and urban resilience. The talk drew approximately 40 faculty and graduate students, marking one