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19 NOV 2025 (WED) 10:00-10:45 | 11:15-12:00 | 14:30-15:15 | 15:45-16:30
- GEOG HKU
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 33 minutes ago
Departmental Research Seminars Series
GeoHealth
Date: 19 NOV 2025 (Wednesday)
Time: 10:00-10:45 | 11:15-12:00 | 14:30-15:15 | 15:45-16:30 (HKT)
Venue: CLL, Department of Geography, 10/F, The Jockey Club Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
Mode: Hybrid
Meeting ID: 916 3536 6140
Password: 686844
Registration link: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=104068
10:00-10:45 | Via Zoom
Climate Change and Health Equity: A GeoHealth Perspective and Evidence for Action
Abstract:
GeoHealth is an emerging scientific field that integrates earth, environmental, health, and data sciences to advance our understanding of the complex interactions between the environment and human health. The critical value of this GeoHealth approach was highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic, is well-established through active interdisciplinary research on climate change and human health, and is urgently needed to inform actions and policies that improve environmental justice and health equity.
In this seminar, we will first discuss the direct and indirect health impacts of climate change, including the effects of extreme temperature on cause-specific mortality, and the short- and long-term health impacts of wildfire smoke. We will then examine how the health burden of these hazards is unevenly distributed across communities and subpopulations, and how compounding exposures, such as heat and air pollution, complicate environmental justice and health equity goals. Finally, this seminar will show how environmental epidemiology and causal inference methods in GeoHealth generate decision-relevant evidence to inform policies that improve health equity.
Dr Yiqun MA
Postdoctoral Scholar, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, United States
Dr. Yiqun Ma is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California San Diego. She received her Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences from the Yale School of Public Health in 2024. Her research lies at the intersection of extreme weather and air pollution health impacts, environmental justice, and advanced epidemiological methods.
Her work has been published in high-impact journals, including first-authored papers in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Communications, and the American Journal of Epidemiology. Her research and presentations have been recognized with several awards, including the 2024 Yale School of Public Health Ph.D. Research Prize, the 2024 Yale Office of Health Equity Research Award for Research Excellence, the 2022 American Geophysical Union Outstanding Student Presentation Award, and International Society for Environmental Epidemiology Conference Travel Awards. Her work has also received broad public attention, with coverage in media outlets such as The Washington Post, Forbes, and National Public Radio.
11:15-12:00 | Via Zoom
Decoding Place-Based Environmental and Social Exposures: Pathways to Mental and Cognitive Health
Abstract:
Environmental and social exposures are increasingly recognized as critical drivers of mental and cognitive health across the life course. While evidence from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies has demonstrated associations between individual exposures and health outcomes, understanding how multidimensional and dynamic environmental and social patterns jointly shape population health remains limited.
This seminar presents a data-driven framework to decode complex, place-based spatio-temporal exposures and elucidate their associations to mental and cognitive health. Leveraging high-dimensional spatiotemporal data, this research quantifies multi-scale environmental metrics from air pollution, land use, and urban functions as well as social factors from socioeconomic status, education, and health care domains. On this basis, the exposures are identified to assess their associations with mental, cognitive health, and suicide.
This work advances a comprehensive understanding of place-based environmental and social exposure patterns and their contribute to risk and resilience in mental and cognitive health. These findings demonstrate how integrating spatio-temporal environmental and social data patterns inform region-specific and time-sensitive strategies for promoting mental and cognitive well-being across populations.
Dr Yuan MENG
Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Population Health Sciences, Weill Cornell Medicine, United States
Dr Yuan Meng is a Postdoctoral Associate at Weill Cornell Medicine. My research focuses on spatiotemporal modeling of environmental and social determinants of health in relation to mental and cognitive outcomes. I integrate spatiotemporal statistics and machine learning to quantify multidimensional environmental metrics, including air pollution, green space, land use, urban functions, and other multi-scale built environment characteristics, as well as socioeconomic factors, and to examine their associations with mental and cognitive health. My work emphasizes identifying environmental risk and resilience factors among vulnerable populations, such as children and older adults. By bridging environmental epidemiology, urban science, and public health, my research advances data-driven frameworks to elucidate how complex, place-based exposures collectively shape population mental health and well-being.
14:30-15:15 | In Person
Promoting Healthier Cities with the Exposome: Where Geography Meets Chemistry and Biology
Abstract:
The Lancet Global Burden of Disease (GBD) and Countdown series reveal that environmental, occupational, and behavioral risks account for nearly 60% of global disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Fortunately, most of these risks are modifiable, unlike genetic factors. The exposome framework seeks to understand how external environmental/social exposures and internal biological responses interact to influence disease risks. This knowledge enables targeted prevention strategies to protect vulnerable populations, reduce disease burdens, and promote healthier cities. Yet, studying the exposome remains challenging, particularly in capturing the full spectrum of exposures, ranging from chemical, physical, social, to lifestyle, across the life course. My research is piecing these exposures together through powerful geographic principles. In this seminar, I will use air pollution exposure assessment as an example to demonstrate how spatial modeling advances mobile monitoring and how hyperlocal mobile data contribute to the exposome studies.
Zhendong YUAN
Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences (IRAS), Utrecht University, Netherlands
Zhendong Yuan is a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD in Environmental Health Sciences from Utrecht University and was a visiting scholar at the Harvard T.H. Chan Public Health. His research bridges geography and epidemiology, focusing on sensing and mapping urban environments (air pollution, noise, heat) using mobile monitoring platforms and multisource data fusion (e.g., street view imagery) to advance environmental epidemiology studies with multimodal AI. He leads European-scale mobile monitoring campaigns and contributes to advancing European exposome research. His work has been published in leading journals such as Environmental Science & Technology and is frequently orally presented at conferences of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) and European Geosciences Union (EGU). Zhendong also serves as the Young Researcher Representative of ISEE and a reviewer for journals such as Environmental Science & Technology, Environment International, and Cities.
15:45-16:30 | In Person
Urban Environments, Health, and Behavior: Geospatial Insights for Sustainable and Healthy Urban Design
Abstract:
Cities are home to more than half of the world’s population. Urban living creates opportunity but also increases exposure to air pollution, heat, noise, crowding, and lack of nature—stressors that strain both body and mind. Contemporary urban science seeks to describe, predict, and explain cities using tools from computer science, statistical physics, and geospatial data science. This talk first examines how urban environments shape human health and physical activity. It then introduces a human-centered urban sensing toolkit that integrates wearables, smartphone apps, and open geospatial data, and explores how these tools can help planners and decision makers design more sustainable, equitable, and health-promoting cities. The talk concludes by considering how the academic community can advance urban science through theory-infused tools that better connect research and planning practice.
Dr Yougeng LU
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University, United States
Yougeng Lu is a postdoctoral researcher with the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University and a geospatial data scientist at Terrafuse AI. He holds a PhD in Urban Planning and Development from the University of Southern California. Dr. Lu’s research centers on human–environment interactions, healthy cities, and geospatial data science, with a particular focus on how urban environments shape human well-being and physical activity. His work has appeared in leading journals such as Nature Health, Nature Cities, Cities, Urban Studies, Travel Behaviour and Society, Environmental Research, and BMJ Open. His research has been supported by the Stanford Realizing Environmental Innovation Program, the Wellcome Trust, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, and the Cyrus Tang Foundation.
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