About me

My name is Rongxiang Su (pronounced as Rong-sheeyang), and I am a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). I hold a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

My research interests lie in geospatial data science, human mobility, travel behavior, and urban analytics. Broadly, my work seeks to understand human mobility, travel behavior, and activity patterns in urban systems by analyzing human-generated data such as mobile phone traces, household travel surveys, and various emerging urban big data. I am particularly interested in developing computational methods to identify and quantify the spatiotemporal dynamics of daily activities and interactions. In parallel, I aim to examine disparities in human behavior by modeling and predicting activity-travel patterns across diverse socio-geographic contexts—ultimately contributing to more sustainable, equitable, and inclusive transportation systems and access to urban opportunities. I am always enthusiastic about discussing research and potential collaborations. Feel free to email me at rsu at illinois dot edu!

I am not accepting PhD students currently. However, if you are interested in working with me: 1) Current UIUC students are welcome to schedule a meeting with me to discuss potential independent study projects. 2) Students from other institutions may join my group as visiting scholars. Please feel free to email me to discuss possible collaborations.

Honors and Awards

• Outstanding Dissertation Award, AAG Transportation Geography Specialty Group, 2025
• Honorable mention for 2023 Eric Pas Dissertation Prize, International Association for Travel Behaviour Research, 2025
• AAG-GISS Student Paper Competition Honorable Mention Award, 2023
• Jack and Laura Dangermond Fellowship, 2022
• Geography Department Excellence in Research Award, UCSB, 2022
• Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad, 2022
• Chinese-American Engineers and Scientists Association of Southern California Scholarship, 2022
• Best paper award, 1st ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Animal Movement Ecology and Human Mobility, Beijing, China (online), 2022

Peer reviewer for

• Geography and GIS: International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Transactions in GIS, Journal of Transport Geography, GIScience\&Remote Sensing, Journal of Spatial Information Science
• Transportation: Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Travel Behaviour and Society, Transportation, European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research, Public Transport, Transportation Letters, Transportation Research Record, Data Science for Transportation, npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport, Transportation Planning and Technology, Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, World Transport Convention
• Multidisciplinary: Nature Human Behaviour, Scientific Reports, IEEE Access, International Journal of Data Science and Analytics, Plos One
• Other: Applied Energy, Computational Urban Science, Applied Network Science, Journal of Happiness Studies, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, npj Complexity, Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy, Geomatics, IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems