Meet the FCL Team & Sister Labs

Gabriel Appiah
PhD Student

I’m a Ph.D. student in the School of City and Regional Planning. Dr. Clio Andris is my advisor. My research interest is in Network Science, Transportation, and Land Use Planning. Before coming to Georgia Tech, I was a Regional Planner at Siouxland Interstate Metropolitan Planning Council, where I focused on GIS, transportation, community, and economic development.

Shaowen Li
Graduate Research Assistant

I am a graduate student in the MS-GIST program at Georgia Tech. I have a foundational background in Landscape Architecture and I now focus on leveraging GIS and spatial data science to solve complex urban challenges. I am particularly interested in regional planning and the intersection of technology, community well-being, and spatial analytics.

Cam Owens
Graduate Research Assistant

I’m a MS CS student with over five years of professional experience developing aerospace and data systems at organizations such as NASA JPL, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Northrop Grumman Space. At Georgia Tech, I've contributed to the Legislative Congruence project within the Friendly Cities Lab. I've also had the privilege of serving as a Regional Finance Chair for the National Society of Black Engineers and co-founded Tech Blast Off, an initiative that has provided free aerospace-inspired STEM workshops to more than 100 students.

Ashu Gupta
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Hi! I'm a fourth-year Computer Science student with concentrations in Media and People. My interests in CS lie mainly in data analysis and visualization, with a trend towards scientific and political data. In the Friendly Cities Lab, I'm studying the patterns and effects of politicians on the American political sphere.

Sichen Jin
PhD Student

I’m a CS Ph.D. student in the School of Interactive Computing, advised by Dr. Clio Andris. My research interests include Visualization, Geographic Information System/Science and Social Computing. Before coming to Georgia Tech, I got my bachelor degree in GIS from Zhejiang University. I also worked at the Natural Language Processing Lab of Tsinghua University and the Visualization and Interface Design Innovation Lab of UC Davis as a research assistant. I had worked on multiple geospatial visualization projects, including infectious diseases spread analysis, patterns of taxi trajectories analysis. I am also involved in some text visual analytics projects, such as rumor spread analysis and conversation structure analysis. You can follow my work on my website.

Max Hill
PhD Student

I have a master's degree in Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) from GT and am currently a PhD student in the School of City & Regional Planning. My research interests involve Network Science, Social Computing, and Urban Systems. I received my bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Chicago in (2022). Between my undergraduate and graduate studies, I served with AmeriCorps and taught a supplementary algebra class at two Chicago public high schools.

Colin Vu
Undergraduate Research Assistant

I am an undergraduate Computer Science student at Georgia Tech in the BS/MS program. I'm interested in anything in the fields of GIS, data visualization and analysis, and spatial technology.

Clio Andris
Lab Director

I am an associate professor in the School of City and Regional Planning and the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. I'm a GIScientist, which means that I study how to represent and model anything on earth on a computer and how to analyze those models. My research is in social networks, interpersonal relationships and livelihoods in geographic space, applied to issues in urban planning, geovisualization, and geography. Our lab is a member of the School of Interactive Computing's Information Visualization Lab. I received my PhD from MIT in 2011 in Urban Information Systems where I was an NDSEG fellow and member of the Senseable City Lab. I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute (2012-2014) and a member of the faculty in the Department of Geography at Penn State (2014-2019). I serve on the National Geospatial Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Interior. I also direct the Masters of GIS program at GT.  

Our Alumni

Jelena Herriott
Graduate Research Assistant

Graduate researcher and masters student in the GIS-T Masters of Science Program.

Arnav Mardia
Graduate / Undergraduate Research Assistant

Arnav joined Georgia Tech from Chennai, India and earned a degree in BS/MS in Computer Science - Machine Learning. He worked on node placement methods for geospatial network analysis and geovisualization.

Drew Walkter
Undergraduate REU

Drew is a CS student at North Carolina A&T State University. He was an Undergraduate Researcher (REU) in the SURE program at Georgia Tech

Xiaofan Liang
Graduate Research Assistant

I am an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at U Mich! For more information about research see this page

Heather Mase
Graduate Research Assistant

Transportation Planner at VHB

Seolha Lee
Graduate Research Assistant

Informatics PhD at UC-Irvine

Claire Patrick
Graduate Research Assistant
Freyja Brandel-Tanis
Graduate Research Assistant

Architecture and Design PhD at Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Orion Allgaier
Graduate Research Assistant
Grant Jones
Graduate Research Assistant
Sonia Sargolzaei
Graduate Research Assistant
Mira Kaufman
Graduate Research Assistant
Anish Rajeev
Senior, High School
Abhay Vittal
Senior, High School
Matthew Lim
Undergraduate Assistant
Yasamin Khorashahi
Undergraduate Researcher
Sambhavi Joshi
Graduate Research Assistant
Margarita Groisman
Undergraduate Assistant

Studying Industrial and Systems Engineering with an analytics concentration.

Josh Baker
Undergraduate Researcher
Shaarif Sajid
Graduate Researcher
Brittany Waltemate
Post-Baccalaureate Researcher
Xi Liu
Graduate Associate

Ph.D. in the Department of Geography at Penn State

Hanzhou Chen
Graduate Associate

Associate MA/Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography at Penn State

Jarrett Gulakowski
Undergraduate Researcher

Undergraduate majoring in geography with a GIS focus

Zixuan Huang
Post BS Researcher

BS degree in Geography GIS and a minor in Energy Business and Finance (EBF)

Sohrab Rahimi
Graduate Associate

Ph.D. of Architecture at Penn State

Michelle Pistner
Graduate Assistant (IGERT Program)

BDSS-IGERT Ph.D. in the Department of Statistics at Penn State

Prathamesh Aher
Undergraduate Researcher

BS in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering with minors in Energy-Business Finance, Geogaphy and GIS

Cassie McMillan
Graduate Assistant (IGERT Program)

IGERT Big Data Social Science Fellow Dual-title Ph.D. in sociology and demography in the Department of Criminology and Sociology at Penn State

Luba Hristova
Undergraduate Researcher

BS in GIS at Penn State

Ruiqi (Bonnie) Guo
Post-Baccalaureate Researcher

BS in Geography and minor in horticulture and anthropology at Penn State

Rebecca Bucci
Graduate Researcher

Graduate student in the Criminology and Sociology department at Penn State

Mengchen Wang
Undergraduate Researcher

BS in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering at Penn State

Christopher Mertz
Undergraduate Researcher

BS in Geography with a focus on GIS at Penn State

Michael Citrenbaum
Undergraduate Researcher

BS in GIS at Penn State

Li-San Hung
Post-Doctoral Researcher

Ph.D. from the Department of Geography at Penn State (minor in Demography)

Margret Logan
Undergraduate Researcher

BS in Industrial Engineering at Penn State

Sister Labs

We are part of the InfoVis Group in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. 

Sister Labs: We are part of a wide network of emerging and established urban and spatial analysis labs across the world.

Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI) Lab, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York (SUNY), PI Yingjie Hu 
CyberInfrastructure and Computational Intelligence Lab (CICI Lab), Arizona State University, PI Wenwen Li
Civic Data Design Lab, MIT, PI Sarah Williams
Geospatial Data Science Lab, University of Wisconsin-Madison, PI Song Gao
Geoinformatics and Earth Observation Lab, Penn State, PI Guido Cervone
Movement Science Lab (MOVE@UCSB), UC-Santa Barbara, PI Somayeh Dodge
NUS Urban Analytics Lab, National University of Singapore, PI Filip Biljecki
Platial Analysis Lab, McGill University, PI Grant McKenzie

If you are doing urban work and would like to be a Sister Lab, let us know!