Meet the FCL Team & Sister Labs

Clio Andris
Lab Director

        I am an assistant professor in the School of City and Regional Planning and the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. I research mathematical models of social networks, social flows, and interpersonal relationships in geographic space, applied to issues of urban planning, visualization, transportation and geography. I teach GIScience classes at multiple levels including Environmental GIS and Spatial Network Analysis, as well as classes on Information Visualization. I am a member of the Center for Spatial Planning Analytics and Visualization (CSPAV) and an affiliate of the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development (CQGRD). I am also a member of the School of Interactive Computing's Information Visualization research group. 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). 

Xiaofan Liang
Graduate Research Assistant

        I am a Ph.D. student in the School of City and Regional Planning, advised by Dr. Clio Andris. My research interests revolve around spatial social networks, general urban analytics (GIS, machine learning, and agent-based modeling), and digital civics/critical data/engagement methods in spatial planning. In the future, I hope to contribute to building more socially sustainable cities in Asia.
        I received a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from UC-Berkeley (2015). I pursued another Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Minerva University (2019), through which I rotated to study in six different countries over four years and grew my interests in cities! Before coming to Georgia Tech, I was an REU at Santa Fe Institute (2017 and 2018), from where I fell in love with complexity science and Clio’s work. You can follow my work here.

Gabriel Appiah
Graduate Research Assistant

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.

Sichen Jin
Graduate Research Assistant

I’m a first-year 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.

Heather Mase
I am a master’s student pursuing a dual degree in City & Regional Planning (MCRP) and Geographic Information Science & Technology (MS-GIST) at Georgia Tech. My research and planning interests include urban environmental design, active transportation, geospatial analytics, and visual storytelling. Prior to pursuing my graduate studies, I worked for a real estate market analytics firm in Atlanta, GA and a trail planning and conservation nonprofit in Charlotte, NC. I received my B.S. in Environmental Studies from Davidson College and am a native of Atlanta, GA.
Claire Patrick
I am a master's student in City & Regional Planning (MCRP) at Georgia Tech. My planning interests include community engagement, land use planning, cartography, and geospatial analytics. I completed my undergraduate degree in Geography at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where I assisted on poverty suburbanization, food systems, and affordable housing research projects.

Our Alumni

Seolha Lee
Graduate Research Assistant
Informatics PhD at UC-Irvine
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

Sara Cavallo
Graduate Assistant

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

Sister Labs

We are part of the Center for Spatial Analysis and Visualization (CSPAV), and 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!