Wenjing Gong

About Me

Greetings,😀! I’m Wenjing Gong, a first-year Ph.D. student in Urban and Regional Science at Texas A&M University, advised by Dr. Xinyue Ye. I am also a Research Assistant at the Center for Geospatial Sciences, Applications, and Technology and a Student Fellow at the Telehealth Institute at Texas A&M University. My research integrates Urban Analytics, Urban Planning, GIScience, and GeoAI to address challenges in Climate Resilience, Human Mobility, and Public Health.
(Updated on 06/2025)

Education

[2024-] Ph.D. Student, Urban and Regional Science
Texas A&M University, College Station, USA
Advisor: Dr. Xinyue Ye
[2019-2022] M.E., Architecture (Urban Study)
Tongji University, Shanghai, China
GPA: 88.5/100 (Entrance through the exam-free recommendation program)
[2019] Visiting Student, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Columbia University, New York, USA
[2014-2019] B.E., Architecture
Shandong University of Science & Technology, Qingdao, China
GPA: 90.5/100 (Rank: 1/60 each year)

Academic & Professional Experience

[2025] Student Fellow
Telehealth Institute, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA
[2024-2025] Research Assistant
Center for Geospatial Sciences, Applications and Technology, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA
[2022-2024] Designer and Planner
Architecture Design & Research Institute of Tongji University, Shanghai, China
[2020] Teaching Assistant
Department of Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

Peer-reviewed Publications

• Ye, X., Li, S., Gong, W.*, Li, X., Li, X., Dadashova, B., Li, W., Du, J., & Wu, D. (2025). Street View Imagery in Traffic Crash and Road Safety Analysis: A Review. Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy, 18(2), 50.
• Ye, X., Yigitcanlar, T., Xu, Y., Head, M., Hang, Y., Sanchez, T., Gong, W., & Niyogi, D. (2025). Urban planning and IPCC-like city assessments integration for climate-resilient cities. Environment and Planning B, 23998083251330940.
• Ye, X., Yigitcanlar, T., Goodchild, M., Huang, X., Li, W., Shaw, S.-L., Fu, Y., Gong, W., & Newman, G. (2025). Artificial intelligence in urban science: why does it matter? Annals of GIS, 0(0), 1–9.
• Gong, W., Lee, C.S., Li, S., Adkison, D., Li, N., Wu, L., & Ye, X. (2025). Cyber victimization in hybrid space: an analysis of employment scams using natural language processing and machine learning models. Journal of Crime and Justice, 1–22.
• Gong, W., Rui, J., & Li, T. (2024). Deciphering Urban Bike-Sharing Patterns: An In-depth Analysis of Natural Environment and Visual Quality in New York’s Citi Bike System. Journal of Transport Geography, 115, 103799.
• Gong, W., Huang, X., White, M., & Langenheim, N. (2023). Walkability Perceptions and Gender Differences in Urban Fringe New Towns: A Case Study of Shanghai. Land, 12(7), 1339.

Selected Under Review Papers:

• Gong, W., Ye, X., Wu, K., Jamonnak, S., Zhang, W., Yang, Y., Huang, X. Integrating Spatiotemporal Vision Transformer into Digital Twins for High-Resolution Heat Stress Forecasting in Campus Environments (Under revision in Journal of Planning Education and Research)
• Ye, X., Gong, W., Yang, Y., Zou, L., Tu, Z., Huang, X., Li, Z., Ning, H., Wu, L. Towards Agentic Urban Digital Twins (AUDiTs): Advancing New Urban Science through Human-Centric LLM Agents (Under review in 33rd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems)
• Yang, Y., Zou, L., Gong, W., Ye, X., Zhou, B., Wang, S. DisasterVLP: Perceiving Multidimensional Disaster Damages from Street-View Images Using Visual-Language Models (Under review in 33rd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems)
• Rui, J., Gong, W. Paying lip service? An investigation into the spatial mismatch between younger and older adults’ streetscape perceptual preference and visitation behavior (Under review in Cities)
• Rui, J., Gong, W., Qin, L. A geo-embedded graph neural network framework for ride-hailing demand: Interpretable modeling of spatiotemporal dynamics driven by street contextual features (Under review in Journal of Transport Geography)
• Rui, J., Shao, C., Hu, Z., Gong, W., Li, X. Concerned with green scarcity or inequity? The impact of the quantity and equity of urban green space on green satisfaction and associated socioeconomic drivers (Under review in Journal of Geographical Sciences)

Presentations

Conferences

• Gong, W., Ye, X., Wu, K., Jamonnak, S., Zhang, W., Yang, Y., Huang, X. Integrating Spatiotemporal Vision Transformer into Digital Twins for High-Resolution Heat Stress Forecasting in Campus Environments. 2025 Annual Meeting of American Association of Geographers, March 24-28, 2025, Detroit, Michigan, USA (Oral).
• Gong, W., Wu, K., Yang, Y., Zhang, W., Ye, X., Huang, X. Integrating high-resolution simulations and transformer network predictions for mitigating human heat stress: A digital twin of a Texas campus. 2024 Texas Weather Conference, November 9, 2024, College Station, Texas, USA (Oral).
• Gong, W., Yang, Y., Zhang, W., Wu, K., Ye, X., Huang, X. Integrating high-resolution simulations and transformer network predictions for mitigating human heat stress: A digital twin of a Texas campus. College of Architecture’s 26th Annual Showcase, October 3, 2024, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA (Poster).
• Gong, W. Simulating and Predicting Spatial-Temporal Human Outdoor Heat Exposure: A Case Study on a Texas Campus. The 2024 Symposium on Spatiotemporal Data Science: GeoAI for Social Sciences, July 24, 2024, Virtual (Abstract accepted).

Workshops

• Gu, J., Gong, W., Zhang, X. Analysis of the Spatial Distribution of Express Courier Stations and Assessment of Site Selection Effectiveness. DigitalFUTURES 12th Summer Workshops, July 2, 2022, Virtual (Oral).
• Gong, W., Huang, H., Zhang, X. Undoing Sprawl: Urban Agriculture as a Social Innovation. Resizing the Urban Form in the Era of “Negative Population Growth” Workshop, December 9, 2019, Columbia University, New York City, USA (Oral).

Awards & Honors

• [2025] Ashok K. Dutt Award for Best Graduate Student Paper (1st place), Regional Development and Planning Specialty Group, 2025 Annual Meeting of American Association of Geographers, $200.
• [2025] UCGIS I-GUIDE 2024-2025 Community Champions Cohort (Student leader).
• [2025] Travel Grant, LAUP Department, TAMU, $600.
• [2024 - 2028] Research Assistantship covering stipend and tuition, Center for Geospatial Sciences, Applications and Technology, TAMU.
• [2019 - 2022] Academic Scholarship covering all tuition fees, TJU.
• [2014 - 2019] First-class Scholarships in academic performance (5%, 8 times), SDUST.
• [2014 - 2019] First-class Corporate Scholarships (5%, 2 times), SDUST.
• [2014 - 2019] “Outstanding Student Pioneer” (5%, 3 times), SDUST.
• [2019] “Outstanding Graduate” of Shandong Province (5%).
• [2019] “Outstanding Student” in Science, Technology, and Innovation (5%), SDUST.
• [2018] Gold Award, SINO-JAPAN Art & Design Exchange Exhibition.
• [2018] National Best Leader Award, National Green Building Design Competition.
• [2018] Grand Prize, National Green Building Design Competition - Deep Green Category.
• [2018] First Prize, The Fourth Academy Award National Art and Design Exhibition.
• [2018] Gold Award, Chinese Creative Design Annual 2016/2017.
• [2018] Silver Award, The Third Bauhaus Award International Design Competition.
• [2018] Bronze Award, Exhibition of Architectural Design in Developing Countries.
• [2018] Excellent Award, Shandong Province College Student Construction Design Competition.
• [2017] Excellence Award, China Architectural Education/TSINGRUN Award Students’ Paper Competition.
• [2017] Bronze Award, The 3rd Mainland, Taiwan and Hongkong Design Invitation Exhibition.
• [2017] Second Prize, National Green Building Design Competition - Green Category.
• [2016] Excellent Award, National Green Building Knowledge Competition for Youth Students.
• [2016] Excellent Market Potential Award, Lion Award International Industrial Design Competition - ‘Innovative Application Design Group: Industrial Robot Systems’.

Services

Invited Reviewer

• International Journal of Geographical Information Science (2)
• Journal of Transport Geography (1)
• Journal of Planning Education and Research (1)
• Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy (1)
• Computational Urban Science (1)
• Forum Geografi (1)

Editorial Boards

• Managing Editor: Computational Urban Science

Conference Organizations

• Session Chair/Primary Organizer: Symposium on Human Dynamics Research: Urban Environmental Intelligence and Human-Climate Interactions. 2025 Annual Meeting of American Association of Geographers, March 24-28, 2025, Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Media Coverage

• Throwing Shade at Heatwaves: Tracking campus “hot spots” could help students stay cool in the Texas heat. [Link]

Skills

• Programming: Python (Data Processing, Visualization, and Analysis), SQL, HTML
• Machine Learning/Deep Learning: Computer Vision (Semantic/Instance Segmentation), Time series Forecasting (LSTM, Transformer), Tree models, Explainable AI (SHAP)
• Spatial Data Analysis: ArcGIS Pro, QGIS, Geoda, MGWR 2.2
• Urban Climate Simulation: SOLWEIG, Envi-met
• Design and Planning: AutoCAD, SketchUp, Rhino, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Enscape, Lumion