Fangzheng Lyu, PhD

I am looking for motivated graduate students interested in Geographic Information Science and Systems, Computational Geography, Urban Informatics, Geospatial AI, and Data-Intensive Geospatial Problem Solving. Qualified Ph.D. students will be fully funded by Research Assistantships, and Master students will be fully funded by Teaching Assistantships. If interested, please email Fangzheng Lyu (fangzheng@vt.edu). More information on Master and Ph.D. programs is available at Virginia Tech Geography.


Fangzheng Lyu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Virginia Tech. He received a Ph.D. in Geography, an M.S. in Geography from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a B.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Hong Kong. Before joining VT Geography, he worked with Prof. Shaowen Wang at the CyberGIS Center for Advanced Digital & Spatial Studies and Institute for Geospatial Understanding through an Integrative Discovery Environment (I-GUIDE).

His research interests are centered around GIScience, Geospatial Data Science and Computational Science, with a particular focus on modeling multi-scale urban climate dynamics using heterogeneous geospatial big data. Specifically, his research work focuses on 1) geospatial data science for understanding multi-scale urban dynamics; 2) scalable spatial algorithms for solving complex geospatial problems; and 3) democratization of cyberGIS for data-intensive geographic research. A common thread in his research is in understanding geospatial problems in urban dynamics, urban planning, health, and related fields with geospatial big data, cyberGIS, geospatial AI and high-performance geospatial computing.