Team

Dr. Park is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, Sustainability, Community, and Urban Studies at the University of Connecticut (UConn). She earned a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her doctoral dissertation was recognized with the Jacques May Prize from the American Association of Geographers (AAG) as the best dissertation addressing themes in health/medical geography. Prior to joining UConn, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, Planning, and Environment at East Carolina University.

Her research explores interdisciplinary questions of environmental health and health disparities using geographic information systems (GIS) and community-engaged approaches, with a particular emphasis on how dynamic human mobility across space and time shapes environmental exposure and health. More recently, her work has made conceptual and methodological contributions by extending the concept of geographic context to include indoor spaces and by developing advanced methods that integrate machine learning, low-cost mobile sensors, and indoor positioning systems to more accurately assess individuals’ environmental exposures across indoor and outdoor environments. Her work has been supported by several external funding sources, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Association of Geographers (AAG), and the North Carolina General Assembly. She currently serves as an academic editor for PLOS ONE, an elected at-large board member of the AAG Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group, and a principal investigator with the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy at UConn.

Curriculum Vitae (Last update: January 2026)

PhD Student

Research Interest: Tao’s research interests span from the technical side of GeoAI to the applications of GIS methods. Her research focuses on the development and optimization of statistical and machine learning models to supercharge spatiotemporal analytics. She is also passionate about leveraging the technical tools in better understanding human and environment interactions, including human mobility analysis, social and environmental phenomena modeling, and air pollution exposure assessment. Her recent work includes an efficient and robust machine learning framework for spatiotemporal data interpolation and an in-depth analysis of commuters’ exposure to PM2.5 using GIS and network analysis. Tao is an active contributor to several ongoing research projects, including the InCHIP-funded air pollution intervention study aimed at promoting health-protective behaviors. Her personal website is https://taopeng.org/.

Awards: 

• AAG GISS-SG Paper Award Finalist: Tao was selected as a finalist for the 2026 AAG Geographic Information Science and Systems Specialty Group (GISS-SG) Student Honors Paper Competition. She will present her work, "Contextual Autoencoder: A Self-Supervised Learning Framework for Spatiotemporal Interpolation under Diverse Missing Data Patterns," in the paper competition session at the 2026 AAG Annual Meeting. 

• Summer Research Fellowship (2025), Department of Geography, Sustainability, Community, and Urban Studies, University of Connecticut.

PhD Student

Research Interest: Ailing's research lies at the intersection of Geographic Information Science (GIS), environmental exposure, and public health. She applies advanced GIS, geospatial data analysis, and environmental sensing to develop innovative methods for personal air pollution exposure and health risk assessment. Her work advances geospatial approaches to exposure assessment by integrating emerging sensing technologies with fine-scale spatiotemporal models, moving beyond traditional static, outdoor-focused, and concentration-based frameworks. Furthermore, her research narrows the geographic scale of exposure assessment from city-wide mobility to the micro-geographic scale of indoor mobility within rooms to capture exposure variation at finer spatial scales. She is currently co-advised by Drs. Yoo Min Park and Xiang Chen.

Awards: 

• AAG Peter Gould Paper Award Finalist: Ailing was selected as a finalist for the 2025 AAG Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group Student Paper Competition. 

• First Place, Lightning Talk Competition, University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS). 

• Summer Research Fellowship (2022-2025), Department of Geography, Sustainability, Community, and Urban Studies (GSCU), University of Connecticut (UConn).

• Urban Scholars Fellowship, Department of GSCU, UConn.

• Conference Participation Award, UConn.

• Outstanding Presentation Award, Connecticut GIS Day. 

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Research Interest: Faith is a rising Junior at the University of Connecticut pursuing a degree in environmental studies with a minor in economics. Her research interests focus on the intersection between climate change, fossil fuel usage, and public health. She hopes to seek sustainable solutions and spark dialogue concerning commuter air pollution through her on-site research of air pollution in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) system, collecting PM2.5 levels in various MBTA stations.

Master's Student; Currently, a PhD student in Integrated Coastal Programs at East Carolina University

Publications: 

• Opejin, A. & Park, Y.M. (2024). Assessing Bias in Personal Exposure Estimates When Indoor Air Quality is Ignored: A Comparison Between GPS-Enabled Mobile Air Sensor Data and Stationary Sensor Network Data. Science of the Total Environment. 905(1), 175249. 

Awards: 

• National Science Foundation (NSF) Travel Award: Abdulahi received the prestigious NSF Travel Award and an invitation to participate in the Natural Hazard Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Summer Institute at the University of San Antonio, Texas. He was among five graduate students who received this competitive nationwide award, where he engaged in an NSF grant proposal writing workshop and other workshops with various NHERI facilities that support innovative research on mitigating the impacts of environmental hazards.

Master's Student; Currently, a PhD student in the Department of Geography and Geospatial Sciences at Kansas State University

Publications: 

• Park, Y.M., Chavez, D., Sousan, S., Figueroa-Bernal, N., Alvarez, J.R., & Rocha-Peralta, J. (2023). Personal Exposure Monitoring Using GPS-Enabled Portable Air Pollution Sensors: A Strategy to Promote Citizen Awareness and Behavioral Changes Regarding Indoor and Outdoor Air Pollution. Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, 33(3), 347-357. 

Undergraduate Research Assistant; Currently, a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at West Virginia University

Publications: 

• Baxter, C. & Park, Y.M. (2024). Food Swamp vs. Food Desert: Analysis of Geographic Disparities in Obesity and Diabetes in North Carolina Using GIS and Spatial Regression. The Professional Geographer, 76(4), 409-424.

Awards: 

• AAG Peter Gould Paper Award: Connolly won the paper award in the AAG Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group Student Paper Competition. He presented his research on the food environment (Baxter & Park, 2024) at the 2024 AAG Annual Meeting for the competition. 

Undergraduate Research Assistant; Currently, a Master's student in the Department of Public Health at East Carolina University

Publications: 

• Park, Y.M., Chavez, D., Sousan, S., Figueroa-Bernal, N., Alvarez, J.R., & Rocha-Peralta, J. (2023). Personal Exposure Monitoring Using GPS-Enabled Portable Air Pollution Sensors: A Strategy to Promote Citizen Awareness and Behavioral Changes Regarding Indoor and Outdoor Air Pollution. Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, 33(3), 347-357.