Yao-Yi Chiang
Spatial AI; data science; geographic information science; multimodal machine learning; spatiotemporal modeling; geographic knowledge extraction; AI for environmental and societal systems
Background & Expertise
Yao-Yi Chiang, PhD, is an associate professor in the Computer Science & Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota. Previously, he was an associate professor (research) in spatial sciences at the University of Southern California. Chiang's research interests are in spatial artificial intelligence. He develops machine learning methods to understand complex environmental phenomena and human-environment interactions using multimodal data that can be sparse, unevenly distributed and span varying spatiotemporal scales. Chiang has received funding from various government agencies, including NSF, NEH, NIH, DARPA, IARPA and NGA, as well as industry partners such as NTT Global Networks and BAE Systems. He was a visiting researcher at Google AI, a machine learning consultant at Meta, and the chief scientist at AirMap. Chiang founded Kartta Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides software and services to refine and assemble geographic knowledge for the public good. Kartta Foundation manages Kartta Labs, a previous Google product.