WenWen Li

WenWen Li

Foundation Professor ,
School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning
Other ASU affiliations
Director, SPARC - Spatial Analysis Research Center
Senior Global Futures Scientist, Global Futures Scientists and Scholars
  • [email protected]
  • Phone: 480-727-5987
  • ‌
  • PO BOX 875302 Tempe, AZ 85287-5302
  • Mail code: 5302
    Campus: Tempe
  • ‌
Biography Research Teaching Public Work
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Long Bio

Dr. Wenwen Li is a Foundation Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University (ASU), where she directs the Spatial Analysis Research Center (SPARC) and the Cyberinfrastructure and Computational Intelligence (CICI) Lab. Her research interests include cyberinfrastructure, big data, geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI), and their applications in data- and computation-intensive environmental and social sciences. Her work has led to widely used cyberinfrastructure tools (e.g., PolarHub and PolarGlobe), and conceptual advances that support climate resilience, disaster response, humanitarian aid, and clean water access in underserved communities. 

Dr. Li has served as principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on projects totaling over $23 million in research funding, supported by federal, state, and philanthropic agencies such as NSF, NASA, USGS, NIH, DOD, ABOR, and Google.org. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the NSF Mid-Career Advancement Award. Dr. Li is a Fellow of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) and the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS). Her contributions to data science and informatics have also been recognized by the AGU’s Greg Leptoukh Lecturer Award and the Geological Society of America’s M. Lee Allison Award for Outstanding Contributions to Geoinformatics and Data Science. Dr. Li was named a Distinguished Lecturer in the AGU College of Fellows Distinguished Lecture Series (2025–2026 and 2026-2027), received the AGU Open Science Recognition Prize (2025) and the NASA Group Achievement Award (2025) recognizing her contributions as part of the AI for Science Team and the team’s collective impact in “developing AI foundational models that enhance scientific analysis, facilitate breakthrough discoveries, and exemplify collaborative innovation, setting new standards for transparency and scientific rigor in AI development.”

 

Read some of our new research projects:

ASU News: A new AI-based flooding mapping tool 

DOD/ERDC project: Using AI to help predict wildfires in Alaska

ABOR project: AI enabled Disaster and Emergency Response 

Google.org project: GeoAI to track Arctic Permafrost Thaw to Inform Climate Actions

NSF project: Cybertraining on AI for Arctic Science

Education
  • Ph.D. Earth System and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University 2010
  • M.S. Signal and Information Processin, Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Sciences 2007
  • B.S. Computer Science, Beijing Normal University 2004
CV
Curriculum Vitae
Research Website URL
http://cici.lab.asu.edu
Google Scholar URL
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=nlBeAO4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Research Interests

Geographic information science and remote sensing, geospatial cyberinfrastructure, big data, semantic interoperability, spatial-temporal data mining and its environmental applications, geospatial semantic search, distributed geospatial information processing

New!

Dr. Li's personal website can be found at: https://geoai4earth.github.io/

The CICI Lab website has been launched. See here for more information: http://cici.lab.asu.edu

I am recruiting talented PhD students majoring in Geography or Computer Science. Applications should address to School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (for Geography PhDs) and School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering (for Computer Science PhDs) at ASU. For queries about Postdoc positions, send your CV and cover letter to wenwen at asu.edu.

Publications

Selected publications

  1. W. Li, S. Wang, and V. Bhatia, 2016. PolarHub: A large-scale web crawling engine for OGC service discovery in cyberinfrastructure. Computer, Environment, and Urban Systems, DOI: 10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2016.07.004.
  2. W. Li, S. Wu, M. Song and X. Zhou. 2016. A scalable cyberinfrastructure solution to support big data management and multivariate visualization of time-series sensor observation data. Earth Science Informatics, DOI: 10.1007/s12145-016-0267-1.
  3. F. Wang, W. Li, and S. Wang, 2016. Polar cyclone identification from 4D climate data in a knowledge-driven visualization system. Climate. (in press)
  4. X. Li, W. Li, A. Middel, S.L. Harlan, A. Brazel, and B.L. Turner, 2016. Remote sensing of the surface urban heat island and land architecture in Phoenix, Arizona: combined effects of land composition and configuration and cadastral-demographic-economic factors. Remote Sensing of Environment, 174 (2016), 233-243.
  5. M. Song, W. Li, B. Zhou and T. Lei, 2016. Spatiotemporal data representation and its effect on the performance of spatial analysis in a cyberinfrastructure environment. Computers and Geosciences, 87(2016), 11-21.
  6. W. Li, H. Shao, S. Wang, X. Zhou, and S. Wu, 2016. A2CI: A Cloud-based, Service-oriented Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure to Support Atmospheric Research. In (T.C. Vance, N. Merati, C. Yang, and M. Yuan Eds): Cloud Computing in Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, 137.
  7. W. Li, K. Cao, R.L. Church, 2016. Cyberinfrastructure, GIS and spatial optimization: challenges and opportunities. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 30(3), 427-431.
  8. R.L. Church and W. Li, 2016. Estimating spatial efficiency using Cybersearch, GIS and spatial optimization. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 30(3), 535-553.
  9. Y. Hu, S. Gao, K. Janowicz, B. Yu, W. Li, and S. Prasad, 2015. Extracting and understanding urban areas of interest using geotagged photos. Computer, Environment and Urban Systems, 54(2015), 240-254.
  10. W. Li and M.F. Goodchild, 2015. An optimization technique for addressing DEM misregistration in hilly terrains. Annals of GIS, DOI:10.1080/19475683.2015.1085438.
  11. W. Xue, K. Cao, and W. Li, 2015. Municipal solid waste collection optimization in Singapore. Applied Geography, 62, 182-190.
  12. W. Li, M. Song, B. Zhou, K. Cao, and S. Gao, 2015. Performance improvement techniques for geospatial web services in a cyberinfrastructure environment. – A case study with a disaster management portal. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, doi:10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2015.04.003.
  13. S. Rey, L. Anselin, X. Li, R. Pahle, J. Laura, W. Li, and J. Koshinsky, 2015. Open Geospatial Analytics with PySAL. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-information, 4(2), 815-836.
  14. F. Chao, W. Li, L. Wolf, and S. Myint, 2015. A spatiotemporal compactness pattern analysis of congressional districts to assess partisan gerrymandering: A case study with California and North Carolina. Annals of Association of American Geographers, 105(4), 736-753.
  15. J. Laura, W. Li, S. Rey and L. Anselin, 2015. Parallelization of regionalization heuristic in distributed computing platforms – A case study with parallel-p-compact-regions problem. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 29(4), 536-555.  
  16. W. Li, V. Bhatia, and K. Cao, 2015. Towards an intelligent polar cyberinfrastructure: enabling semantic search in geospatial metadata catalogue to support polar data discovery. Earth Science Informatics. DOI: 10.1007/s12145-014-0185-
  17. E.A. Wentz and W. Li, 2015. Shape. In: The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment (in press).
  18. X. Li, W. Li, L. Anselin, S.J. Rey and J. Koschinsky, 2014. A Map-Reduce Algorithm to Create Contiguity Weights for Spatial Analysis of Big Data. BigSpatial 2014.
  19. Z. Zhou, Z. Cheng, K. Ning, W. Li, and L. Zhang, 2014. A sub-chain ranking and recommendation mechanism for facilitating geospatial web service composition. International Journal of Web Service Research, 11(3), 52-75.
  20. M. Widener and W. Li, 2014. Using twitter as a tool for understanding healthy food consumption and access in the US. Applied Geography, 54(2014), 189-197.
  21. L. Anselin, S. Rey and W. Li, 2014. Metadata and provenance for spatial analysis: the case of spatial weights. International Journal of Geographical Information Science. DOI:10.1080/13658816.2014.917313.
  22. W. Li, T. Chen. E.A. Wentz and C. Fan, 2014. NMMI: A mass compactness measure for spatial pattern analysis of areal features. Annals of Association of American Geographers, DOI:10.1080/00045608.2014.941732.
  23. W. Li, R.L. Church and M.F. Goodchild, 2014. The p-compact-regions problem. Geographical Analysis, 46(3), 250-273.
  24. S. Gao, L. Li, W. Li, K. Janowicz and Y. Zhang, 2014. Constructing gazetteers from volunteered geographic information based on Hadoop. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems. DOI: 10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2014.02.004
  25. K. Liu, C. Yang, W. Li, Z. Gui, C. Xu and J. Xia, 2014. Using ontology and similarity calculations to rank Earth science data searching results. International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research, 5(2), 44-58.
  26. W. Li, R.L. Church and M.F. Goodchild, 2014. An extendable heuristic                                                                                                                                            framework to solve p-compact-regions problem for urban economic modeling. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 43(1), 1-13.
  27. W. Li, S.J. Rey, and L. Anselin, 2014. SAM: A Provenance Model for Spatial Analytical Methods. 8th International Conference on Geographic Information Science. Vienna, Austria. (extended abstract)
  28. W. Li, E.A. Wentz, and J. Merson, 2014. Normalized moment of inertia to quantify space-time patterns of urban growth. 8th International Conference on Geographic Information Science. Vienna, Austria. (extended abstract)
  29. K. Cao, B. Huang, M. Li and W. Li, 2013. Calibrating a cellular automata model for understanding rural-urban land conversion: A Pareto front based multi-objective calibration approach. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, DOI:10.1080/13658816.2013.851793.
  30. W. Li, L. Li, M.F. Goodchild and L. Anselin, 2013. A geospatial cyberinfrastructure for economic policy analysis and decision-making. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 2(2), 413-431.
  31. W. Li, M.F. Goodchild, L. Anselin, K. Weber, 2013. A service-oriented smart cyberGIS framework for data-intensive geospatial problems. In: S. Wang and M.F. Goodchild (Eds) CyberGIS: Fostering a New Wave of Geospatial Discovery and Innovation. Springer. (in press)
  32. W. Li, M.F. Goodchild and R. L. Church, 2013. An efficient measure of compactness for 2D shapes and its application in regionalization problems. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 27(6), 1227-1250.
  33. B. Zhou, C. Yeh, W. Li and W. Zhang, 2013. Large-Scale Pulse Compression for Costas Signal with GPGPU. In Modern Accelerator Technologies for Geographic Information Science, pp. 133-143. Springer US.
  34. W. Li, M.F. Goodchild and R. Raskin, 2012. Towards geospatial semantic search: exploiting latent semantic relations in geospatial data. International Journal of Digital Earth, DOI:10.1080/17538947.2012.674561.
  35. W. Li, R. Raskin and M.F. Goodchild, 2012. Semantic similarity measurement based on knowledge mining: an artificial neural network approach. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 26(8), 1415-1435.
  36. W. Li, M. F. Goodchild, R. L. Church and B. Zhou, 2012. Geospatial data mining on the Web: Discovering locations of emergency service facilities. ADMA 2012, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 7713, 552-563.
  37. B. Zhou, C. Ye, W. Li, M. Song, 2012. General-purpose graphics processing unit based large-scale pulse compression for a Costas signal. Shandong Science, 25(6), 47-53. (in Chinese)
  38. W. Li, C. Yang, D. Nebert, R. Raskin, P. Houser and H. Wu, 2011. Semantic-based service chaining for building a virtual Arctic spatial data infrastructure. Computers & Geosciences, 37 (11), 1752-1762.
  39. Z. Li, C. Yang, H. Wu, W. Li and L. Miao, 2011. An optimized framework for seamlessly integrating OGC web services to support geospatial sciences, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 25(4), 595-613.
  40. K. Liu, C. Yang, W. Li, Z. Li, H. Wu, A. Rezgui and J. Xia, 2011. The GEOSS clearinghouse high performance search engine. The 19th International Conference on Geoinformatics, Shanghai, China.
  41. W. Li, C. Yang and C. Yang, 2010. An active crawler for discovering geospatial web services and their distribution pattern, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 24(8), 1127-1147.
  42. C. Yang, H. Wu, Q. Huang, Z. Li, J. Li, W. Li, L. Miao and M. Sun, 2010. WebGIS performance issues and solutions, ISPRS book on Web and Wireless GIS. (in press)
  43. W. Li and C. Yang, 2010. Distributed geoinformation computing. Advanced Geoinformation Science, P. Yang. D. Wong, Q. Miao and R. Yang (Eds), CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, 83-92.
  44. W. Li, Q. Huang, C. Yang and Y. Cao, 2010. Geospatial grid computing. Advanced Geoinformation Science, P. Yang. D. Wong, Q. Miao and R. Yang (Eds), CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, 99-109.
  45. M. Bambacus and W. Li, 2010. Digital Earth. Advanced Geoinformation Science, P. Yang. D. Wong, Q. Miao and R. Yang (Eds), CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, 416-423.
  46. R. Raskin, N. Zhou and W. Li, 2010. Geoinformation Knowledge Representation and Applications. Advanced Geoinformation Science, P. Yang. D. Wong, Q. Miao and R. Yang (Eds), CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, 275-302.
  47. W. Li, C. Yang and R. Raskin, 2010. Semantic registration for geoscientific data integration through ESIP semantic web testbed. 2010 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS10), Honolulu, HI.
  48. Z. Li and W. Li, 2010. Geobrowser and spatial web portals. Advanced Geoinformation Science, P. Yang. D. Wong, Q. Miao and R. Yang (Eds), CRC Press/uTaylor and Francis, 234-239.
  49. W. Li, C. Yang and R. Raskin, 2009. A semantic meta-catalogue for intelligent geographic information discovery. In: Proceedings of 17th International Conference on Geoinformatics, Fairfax, VA, 1-5.
  50. W. Li, C. Yang and D. Sun, 2009. Mining geophysical parameters through decision-tree analysis to determine correlation with tropical cyclone development. Computers & Geosciences, 35(2), 309-316.
  51. Z. Zhou, B. Zhou, W. Li, B. Griglak, C. Caiseda and Q. Huang, 2009. Evaluating query performance on object-relational spatial databases. In: Proceedings of 2nd IEEE International Conference on Computer Science and Information Technology, Beijing, China, 489-492.
  52. W. Li, C. Yang and R. Raskin, 2008. A semantic enhanced model for searching in spatial web portals. In: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence-Semantic Scientific Knowledge Integration AAAI/SSKI Spring Workshop, Palo Alto, CA, 47-50.
  53. W. Li and P. Yang, 2008. A Semantic Search Engine for Spatial Web Portal. In: Proceedings of IEEE International Geosciences and Remote Sensing Symposium, IGARSS08, Boston, US, II-1278- II-1281.
  54. M. Bambacus, C. Yang, J. Evans, Z. Li, W. Li and Q. Huang, 2008. Sharing Earth science information to support the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS). In: Proceedings of IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS08), Boston, US, I-141 – I-144.
  55. C. Yang, W. Li, J. Xie and B. Zhou, 2008. Distributed Geospatial Information Processing- sharing distributed geospatial resources to support the Digital Earth. International Journal of Digital Earth, 1(3), 259-278.
  56. W. Li, P. Yang and B. Zhou, 2008. Internet-based spatial information retrieval. Encyclopedia of GIS 2008, 596-599. 

 

Research Activity
  • Li,Wenwen*. PolarGlobe: Powering up Polar Cyberinfrastructure Using M-Cube Visualization for Polar Climate Studies. NSF-PLR(7/7/2015 - 6/30/2018).
  • Li,Wenwen*. Deep Neural Net Learning from Multi-source Geospatial Data to Support Terrain Features 2015 - 2018. DOI-USGS(6/10/2015 - 6/9/2018).
  • Li,Wenwen*. CAREER: Cyber-Knowledge Infrastructure for Geospatial Data. NSF-SBE(5/1/2015 - 4/30/2020).
  • Li,Wenwen*. Enhancing Open Search in OGC CSW Catalogues to Improve Accessibility of Distribution. OGC(1/5/2015 - 9/30/2015).
  • Li,Wenwen*. Building an Effective Service-Oriented Cyberinfrastructure Portal to Support Sustained Polar Sciences. NSF-OPP(1/1/2014 - 12/31/2015).
  • Li,Wenwen*. Transform Geospatial Knowledge Discovery Through an Interoperable Data Fusion Framework in the OGC Testbed 10. OGC(10/15/2013 - 8/31/2014).
Courses
2026 Fall
Course Number Course Title
ASB 590 Reading and Conference
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
2026 Spring
Course Number Course Title
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
2025 Fall
Course Number Course Title
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
GIS 592 Research
2025 Spring
Course Number Course Title
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
2024 Fall
Course Number Course Title
CSE 792 Research
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
2024 Spring
Course Number Course Title
CSE 792 Research
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
GIS 692 Research
2023 Fall
Course Number Course Title
CSE 792 Research
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
2023 Spring
Course Number Course Title
CSE 792 Research
2022 Fall
Course Number Course Title
CSE 792 Research
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
2022 Spring
Course Number Course Title
CSE 792 Research
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
GIS 521 GIS Programming
2021 Fall
Course Number Course Title
CSE 792 Research
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
GIS 322 Programming Principles GIS II
Honors / Awards
  • 2023 - Fellow, University Consortium of Geographic Information Science
  • 2023 - Fellow, American Association of Geographers
  • 2023 - Faculty Excellence Award, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning
  • 2021 - NSF Mid-Career Advancement Award
  • 2020 - Global Young Scientist Award for Leading-edge Science and Technology (inaugural), World Geospatial Developer Conference (WGDC)
  • 2015 - NSF CAREER award
  • 2014 - NCSA CyberGIS Fellow
  • 2011 - Outstanding PhD Graduate Award, George Mason University
  • 2010 - Travel Grant, NSF Workshop "Working Towards a National Geoinformatics Community"
Service
  • 2022-2025 - Chair, Research committee, University Consortium of Geographic Information Science
  • 2013-2014 - Chair, Cyberinfrastructure Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers
  • 2012-2013 - Vice chair, Cyberinfrastructure Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers
  • 2012- Member, Spatial Decision Support Consortium at the University of Redlands, CA, USA
Expertise Areas
Climate Science
Computational Spatial Science
Data Mining
Earth Systems
Geography
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