🔈 [March to May 2026] I am looking to interview more urban planners (broadly defined—from those with an educational background in urban planning to those whose jobs frequently interact with urban planning considerations, those who works in planning consulting firms or in roles with “planning” in their job titles) to better understand the implications of data centers on urban life and the built environment, as well as the roles planners play within the data center ecosystem. The goal is to consolidate these insights into an academic paper, develop new visualizations to support shared understanding, and provide updates to the white paper and web prototype. If you would like to be interviewed, please fill in the form here.
📄 NEW Our new white paper: From Infrastructure to Implications: Data Center 101 for Urban Planners is published, together with an interactive media prototype that reveal many-to-many relationship mapping between data center infrastructure components and their associated implications.
🔈 NEW I served as a panelist at a media briefing organized by AAAS Center for Scientific Evidence in Public Issues and SciLine on the topic of “Local implications of data center growth”. View recorded video and transcript here. (Feburary, 2026)
💰 NEW I am awarded 2026 Graham Sustainability Catalyst grant with a team of faculty, looking into how data centers shape water, energy, and communities. (Jan, 2026)
📄 NEW My dissertation project Transforming Mobility Barriers to Connectivity: Examining the Impact of the AeroATL Greenway Plan in Reconnecting Communities Around Aerotropolis Atlanta is published at Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board!
🔈 NEW I was invited as speaker at Urban Tech Summit at Cornell Tech on November 11-12th to share our recent research on data center and zoning (November, 2025).
🔈 I am invited as a roundtable panelist at University of Michigan Symposium on AI, Data Center Infrastructure, and Climate Change Challenge on October 30th. Register here.
🔈 I was invited to join UM Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program as an Affiliated Faculty! (October, 2025)
🔈 I am going to present a variety of projects at ACSP 2025 and is open to meet with prospective PhD students in-person during the conference! Please reach out to me in email early to schedule a time (October, 2025).
🔈 I spoke at UMSI (School of Information) again in a data center panel in the UM Climate Week. (October, 2025)
🔈 I presented the work on Decoding Municipal AI Landscape at UM School of Information Computational Social Science Seminar (see details). (October, 2025)
🔈 [CLOSED] I am hiring 1-3 research assistants Fall 2025 to support a project exploring the planning and community implications of data centers. Please apply through this Google Form. Application is due September 3rd. (August, 2025)
🔈 [CLOSED] I am hiring a full-time, nine months, Urban AI research associate to start in September, 2025. Interested candidate should apply as soon as possible as the deadline is rolling. Please see application details here. (July, 2025)
💰 I am awarded 2025 Michigan Institute of Data & AI in Society PODS grant, co-funded by Microsoft to work on project “Governing AI’s Footprint: A Scalable Human-AI Workflow to Extract Zoning Codes for Data Centers and Renewable Energy Sitting” (July, 2025)
🔈 I presented team research “Decoding the Municipal AI Landscape: Generative AI-Driven Insights for AI Governance and Application in the City of Seattle” at CUPUM 2025. (June, 2025)
🔈 I am grateful to have the opportunity to present a collection of my research on exploring Human-AI Collaboration at Urban Big Data Centre @ University of Glasgow. (June, 2025)
🔈 I am honored to give a seminar talk at UCL CASA to share my thoughts on how human (including planners!) and AI can better collaborate in the future. (June, 2025)
🔈 I shared my network research at NYU Center for Urban Science + Progress, hosted by Prof. Takahiro Yabe. (June, 2025)