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I am a postdoctoral researcher at MIT Senseable City Lab. I received my PhD in 2022 in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), with focus on Urban Design and Analytics. I also hold B.S. (2016) and M.S. (2018) degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from KAIST.
My research interest is in leveraging data-driven approaches to 1) understand the interaction between urban environment and people; and 2) model spatiotemporal changes of cities, and therefore, draw implications for future planning based on quantitative evidence.
I am honored to have been selected in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list (2023) - Healthcare & Science category (link).
Recent News
December 2024
Delivered an invited talk entitled "Generative AI Applications and Implications for Urban and Geographical Research" at the 2024 Korean Regional Science Association Young Scholar Society Seminar.
November 2024
Delivered a guest lecture on "Generative AI, cities and real estate" in the course 11.325 Technological Change, Innovation, and Real Estate at MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
October 2024
Delivered a guest lecture on "Generative AI Applications and Implications for Urban Design Research" in the course Generative AI Applications in Social Science at Virginia Tech, Department of Geography.
October 2024
Published a 1st author research note article "Multimodal Large Language Models (LLMs) as Built Environment Auditing Tools" in The Professional Geographer. Available online!
October 2024
Published a 1st author article "Urban street clusters: unraveling the associations of street characteristics on urban vibrancy dynamics in age, time, and day" in Urban Informatics. Available online!
September 2024
Published a 1st author article "Place identity: a generative AI’s perspective" in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. Available online!
September 2024
Published a co-authored article "Implications for spatial non-stationarity and the neighborhood effect averaging problem (NEAP) in green inequality research: evidence from three states in the USA" in Journal of Geographical Systems. Available online!
September 2024
Published a co-authored article "The cost of climate change: A generalized cost function approach for incorporating extreme weather exposure into public transit accessibility" in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems. Available online!
August 2024
Introduced Senseable City Lab to incoming freshmen students at MIT as a part of the First Year Explorations. Always a pleasure to interact with future generations. Welcome to MIT!
July 2024
Delivered an invited talk entitled "Generative AI Applications and Implications for Urban Design Research" at KAIST Urban Design Lab Seminar Series.
July 2024
Presented "Place Identity: A Generative AI’s Perspective" at the Symposium on Spatiotemporal Data Science: GeoAI for Social Sciences, Virginia Tech Research Center, Arlington, VA, USA.
June 2024
Completed the Spring 2024 Kaufman Teaching Certificate Program and received the letter of completion and certificate from the MIT Teaching + Learning Lab.
May 2024
Published a co-authored article "Examining the socio-spatial patterns of bus shelters with deep learning analysis of street-view images: A case study of 20 cities in the U.S." in Cities. Available online!
February 2024
Published a co-authored article "Exploring the limitations in how ChatGPT introduces environmental justice issues in the United States: A case study of 3,108 counties" in Telematics and Informatics. Available online!
November 2023
Delivered a guest lecture on "Generative AI, cities and real estate" in the course 11.325 Technological Change, Innovation, and Real Estate at MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
October 2023
Presented "Discovering Inequality in Green Space Exposure from Street View Images: A Case Study in 25 Small- and Medium-Sized Cities in the U.S." at the 2023 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) 63rd Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, USA.
October 2023
Presented "An Examination of the Spatial Coverage and Temporal Variability of Google Street View (GSV) Images in Small- and Medium-sized cities: A People-Based Approach" at the 2023 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) 63rd Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, USA.
September 2023
Presented "Understanding Place Identity with Generative AI" at the GIScience 2023, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
June 2023
Recent piece "AI tools are rapidly changing how we imagine the urban environment" is out in Dezeen, written by Fábio Duarte and Washington Fajardo, co-written by Martina Mazzarello and Kee Moon Jang. Please take a read! (link)
June 2023
Delivered an invited talk entitled "Urban analytics for human-centered planning and design + Career development in urban studies" at Seoul National University, Department of Architecture & Architectural Engineering, Graduate Lecture Series.
June 2023
Published a preprint "Understanding Place Identity with Generative AI" in arXiv as 1st author. (link)
May 2023
Delivered an invited talk entitled "Urban analytics for human-centered planning and design: what can data tell us about our urban experience?" at University of Seoul, Department of Architecture, 2023 Spring Special Lecture Series.
May 2023
Received a grant for the Next Generation Science & Technology Leader NET Activity Program funded by The Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (KOFST). Looking forward to connecting with the future leaders in Architecture, Urban Studies and Environmental Science fields in Boston, USA!
May 2023
Selected to the Healthcare & Science category in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list - Class of 2023. (link)
May 2023
Delivered an invited talk entitled "Urban Analytics for Human-centered Planning and Design" at Urban Design Institute of Korea, Big Data + Inter-disciplinary Research Board Special Seminar, Data-driven Design.
Mar 2023
Presented "Discovering inequality in green space exposure from street view images: a case study in 25 small- and medium-sized cities in the U.S." in GeoAI and Deep Learning Symposium: Urban Visual Intelligence at the 2023 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (AAG2023), Denver, CO, USA.
Mar 2023
Presented "A methodological investigation of the spatial coverage and temporal variability of Google Street View (GSV) images in small- and medium-sized cities: A people-based approach" in Symposium on Geospatial Approaches to Pressing Grand Challenges: Global Pandemics, Climate Change, and Food Security: Geospatial Techniques for Pressing Social and Environmental Challenges at the 2023 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (AAG2023), Denver, CO, USA.
Mar 2023
Published an article "An examination of the spatial coverage and temporal variability of Google Street View (GSV) images in small-and medium-sized cities: A people-based approach" in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems as 2nd and corresponding author.
Mar 2023
Joined MIT Senseable City Lab as a postdoctoral researcher.