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I am a postdoctoral researcher at MIT Senseable City Lab. I received my PhD in 2022 in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), with focus on Urban Design and Analytics. I also hold B.S. (2016) and M.S. (2018) degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from KAIST.
My research interest is in leveraging data-driven approaches to 1) understand the interaction between urban environment and people; and 2) model spatiotemporal changes of cities, and therefore, draw implications for future planning based on quantitative evidence.
I was recently selected in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list (2023) - Healthcare & Science category (link).
Recent News
October 2023
Presented "Discovering Inequality in Green Space Exposure from Street View Images: A Case Study in 25 Small- and Medium-Sized Cities in the U.S." at the 2023 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) 63rd Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, USA.
October 2023
Presented "An Examination of the Spatial Coverage and Temporal Variability of Google Street View (GSV) Images in Small- and Medium-sized cities: A People-Based Approach" at the 2023 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) 63rd Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, USA.
September 2023
Presented "Understanding Place Identity with Generative AI" at the GIScience 2023, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
June 2023
Recent piece "AI tools are rapidly changing how we imagine the urban environment" is out in Dezeen, written by Fábio Duarte and Washington Fajardo, co-written by Martina Mazzarello and Kee Moon Jang. Please take a read! (link)
June 2023
Delivered an invited talk entitled "Urban analytics for human-centered planning and design + Career development in urban studies" at Seoul National University, Department of Architecture & Architectural Engineering, Graduate Lecture Series.
June 2023
Published a preprint "Understanding Place Identity with Generative AI" in arXiv as 1st author.
May 2023
Delivered an invited talk entitled "Urban analytics for human-centered planning and design: what can data tell us about our urban experience?" at University of Seoul, Department of Architecture, 2023 Spring Special Lecture Series.
May 2023
Received a grant for the Next Generation Science & Technology Leader NET Activity Program funded by The Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (KOFST). Looking forward to connecting with the future leaders in Architecture, Urban Studies and Environmental Science fields in Boston, USA!
May 2023
Selected to the Healthcare & Science category in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list - Class of 2023. (link)
May 2023
Delivered an invited talk entitled "Urban Analytics for Human-centered Planning and Design" at Urban Design Institute of Korea, Big Data + Inter-disciplinary Research Board Special Seminar, Data-driven Design.
Mar 2023
Presented "Discovering inequality in green space exposure from street view images: a case study in 25 small- and medium-sized cities in the U.S." in GeoAI and Deep Learning Symposium: Urban Visual Intelligence at the 2023 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (AAG2023), Denver, CO, USA.
Mar 2023
Presented "A methodological investigation of the spatial coverage and temporal variability of Google Street View (GSV) images in small- and medium-sized cities: A people-based approach" in Symposium on Geospatial Approaches to Pressing Grand Challenges: Global Pandemics, Climate Change, and Food Security: Geospatial Techniques for Pressing Social and Environmental Challenges at the 2023 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (AAG2023), Denver, CO, USA.
Mar 2023
Published an article "An examination of the spatial coverage and temporal variability of Google Street View (GSV) images in small-and medium-sized cities: A people-based approach" in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems as 2nd and corresponding author.
Mar 2023
Joined MIT Senseable City Lab as a postdoctoral researcher.
Nov 2022
Delivered an invited talk entitled "What Can Data Tell Us About Our Urban Experience?" at KAIST Urban Design Lab Seminar Series.
Nov 2022
Joined EntreReality as a Research Specialist and will be conducting research on 3D human pose estimation to create realistic avatars for an interactive metaverse platform.
Sep 2022
Registered a Korea Patent "Demand forecasting method for mobility-on-demand services" (Patent No. 10-2441523).
Aug 2022
Received PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Looking forward to what comes next!
May 2022
Successfully defended my doctoral dissertation on "Discovering the Impact of Urban Regeneration on Place Identity Change with User-Generated Contents Analytics". Special thanks to my committee members: Prof. Youngchul Kim, Prof. Seung-Ook Lee, Prof. Albert Tonghoon Han, Dr. Fabio Duarte, and Prof. Jae Seung Lee.
May 2022
Presented "How Do Regeneration Projects Change Crowdsourced Place Identity?" at the 2022 American Planning Association National Planning Conference (NPC22), San Diego, CA, USA.
Mar 2022
Joined MIT Senseable City Lab on campus for the period of Mar 2022 until May 2022.
Feb 2022
Successfully passed the doctoral dissertation proposal. Special thanks to my committee members: Prof. Youngchul Kim, Prof. Seung-Ook Lee, Prof. Albert Tonghoon Han, Dr. Fabio Duarte, and Prof. Jae Seung Lee.
Jan 2022
Published an article "Redesigning urban elements and structures considering autonomous vehicles: Preparing design strategies for wide implementation in cities" in Cities as co-1st author.