Chunyuan Diao

Dr. Diao is an outstanding early-career scholar. At UIUC, where she was hired as an assistant professor, Dr. Diao has launched a highly impactful and independent research program in GIScience with a focus on environmental GIScience/remote sensing. She has published a series of high-quality papers in prominent scientific journals in the field, including Remote Sensing of Environment, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, demonstrating her innovative and significant research contributions to the field. Dr. Diao’s research contributions are also evident in her receipt of a prestigious CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation and an Early Career Investigator grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. These highly competitive grants are awarded to early-career faculty who have exceptional potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in their disciplinary fields. In addition to these highly competitive awards, Dr. Diao has received the AAG Early Career Scholars in Remote Sensing Award, CPGIS Young Scholar Award, Microsoft AI for Earth Award, NCSA Blue Waters Broadening Participation Allocation Award, and the UIUC Arnold O. Beckman Research Award.

The UCGIS Early-Mid Career Research Award is to celebrate an outstanding early-mid career research record of innovative ideas or methods that lead to research impacts on the theory and/or practice of GIScience or geographic information technology.

UCGIS will honor Chunyuan Diao and other award recipients as part of its Symposium 2023 programming activities.