UB geographer earns UCGIS Fellow recognition

Ling Bian, professor in the Department of Geography, College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) Fellow status in recognition of her advancement of research, education and community service in the geospatial community.

According to UCGIS, Bian was chosen as a fellow due to her impressive record of scholarship over the years, noting, “Dr. Bian has made substantial contributions in advancing geospatial science through her scholarly work, her mentoring and teaching, and her numerous services to the UCGIS and related communities. UCGIS is very pleased to name Dr. Ling Bian as a UCGIS Fellow.”

UCGIS is a nonprofit consortium of universities and organizations dedicated to advancing geographic information science research and education.

“It’s the only GI science academic organization in the country so being named a fellow means a lot,” Bian says. “All the fellows chosen before me are very dedicated and well- established scholars, so I’m happy to follow in their footsteps. Personally, and professionally, it's a great honor.”

Bian has been recognized for her work in reframing how scientists predict the spread of infectious diseases.  

“Part of my research studies mobility and the interaction of individuals. If we’re sick and we go to public spaces, we infect other people. Or if other people are sick, they infect us. Diseases spread by mobility and by interactions in shared common spaces. So that’s the part I focus on,” Bian said. 

She developed an individual-based modeling framework that looks at the unique individuals and their mobility and interaction behaviors within specific geographic spaces. This detailed approach allows public health officials to catch localized outbreaks before they turn into major epidemics and directly identify the specific communities most at risk.

Her research is heavily cited across disciplines, marking a leap forward in spatial data science and public health. Bian’s work has also been supported by several research grants from NIH.  

UB has played a central role throughout Bian’s career. In fact, a small UB-sponsored conference in 1998 was the reason she entered the field of public health in the first place.

“I was junior faculty then, working on how to represent things as moving. At the conference, I was trying to see if I could extend the conceptual framework to disease dispersion. A well-known medical geographer was there. He told me that at that point, all of the studies focused on populations, but my work was on individuals,” Bian recalled. “So my work was new.”

Her early research on scale effects in geographic analysis, her foundational work on geographic representation, and her individual-based spatial modeling in health studies collectively created new ways to understand and represent space. 

In addition to her influential research, Bian is an effective mentor and teacher. She has served as the major advisor for 10 PhD and over 40 MA/MS students.

Bian has made significant service contributions to the GIScience community. She served two terms as editor of the Geographic Methods section of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers and has been an active UCGIS leader as a delegate, communications committee chair, board member and member of several nomination committees. More recently, she has helped organize webinars highlighting emerging GIScience research.