The University of Illinois

New Frontiers Initiative Webinar and Training Series

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Geospatial Intelligence for Food Security, Water Security, and Environmental Sustainability

by Dr. Kaiyu Guan, Founding Director of Agroecosystem Sustainability Center, University of Illinois

8 AM Pacific / 9 AM Mountain / 10 AM Central / 11 AM Eastern for 1 hour.

Abstract

Geospatial intelligence, which integrates remote sensing technology, geospatial analytics, and artificial intelligence, plays critical roles in developing solutions when deep domain science provides the foundations and knowledge. Here I will discuss our recent effort at the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center (ASC) at UIUC in applying geospatial intelligence to advance the scientific understanding and applications in food security, water security, and environmental sustainability, with a central focus on the US agriculture. These works developed at ASC increase our society's resilience and adaptability to maintain sustainability of ecosystem services food security and water resources under the influence of climate change and anthropogenic drivers.

Biography

Dr. Kaiyu Guan is a Blue Waters Associate Professor in ecohydrology and remote sensing and the Founding Director of Agroecosystem Sustainability Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Kaiyu Guan received the B.A. degree in geography and geoinformatics from Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, in 2008, and the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in water resources and environmental engineering from Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA, in 2010 and 2013, respectively.

From 2013 to 2015, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar with the Center of the Food Security and the Environment, Stanford University. From 2015 to 2016, he was a Quantitative Scientist with the Climate Corporation. He joined UIUC in 2016. His research group uses satellite data, computational models, field work, and AI to address how climate and human practices affect crop productivity, water resource availability, and ecosystem functioning. Guan has published 120+ papers in leading scientific journals. Guan leads 20+ federal grants from NASA, NSF, DOE, and USDA. Guan is the awardee of NSF CAREER Award, NASA New Investigator Award, AGU Early Career Award in Global Environmental Change, Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientist Finalist.

Please register for the webinar.