PhD Candidate Yichen Yang Wins the Yale University’s 2022 Esri Innovation Program (EIP) Student of the Year

Image source: https://environment.yale.edu/content/documents/00016720/Canopy-Fall-2019.pdf
June 6, 2022

We are pleased to announce that our very own, Yichen Yang, a PhD Candidate in Yale School of the Environment, has been awarded Yale University’s Esri Innovation Program (EIP) Student of the Year for 2022

Yang won the award based on his work in the “Biking for Science and Health” scientific project, led by Yale Center of Earth Observation (YCEO) and under the supervision of YCEO director; Professor Xuhui Lee. This project is supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a Leitner Award for Uncommon Collaboration. 

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The project aims to provide high resolution data of health-related environmental variables. These data will be collected via sensors mounted on private and public bicycles, which is an innovative idea of crowdsourcing that allow cyclists to become citizen scientists. Yichen used his data analysis skills to create a workflow that couples GIS, remote sensing, and Neural Network analysis to generate high spatiotemporal resolution Land Surface Temperature (LST) data for New Haven County in Connecticut. The results obtained by this study clearly highlights the urban warming caused by the anthropogenic effect of constructions in the area. This warming can reach 11 degrees for land surface during a hot summer day.

Yichen used many tools and software during his research, like ArcGIS, ENVI, Google Earth Engine, Python, MATLAB, and many more. Yichen and Professor Lee published the result of their work in Remote Sensing journal, the article can be viewed via this link.

Congratulations, Yichen! 

Sources:

- https://storymaps.arcgis.com/collections/eb998958af064940ac9c472676b6cf0…

- https://biking-for-science.yale.edu/