People

People

S (Subu) Subramanian

Chair, CGA Faculty Advisory Group
2020 - present
S V Subramanian is Professor of Population Health and Geography at Harvard University. He was the Founding Director of Graduate Studies for the interdisciplinary PhD program in Population Health Sciences at Harvard. He has published over 700 articles...
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Jeff Blossom

GIS Services Manager, 2016 - present
Senior GIS Specialist, 2007 - 2015
Jeff joined the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard in 2007 as a Senior GIS Specialist, and became the GIS Service Manager in 2016. He has experience working in the GIS industry as a technician, analyst, developer, manager, and educator. Jeff earned...
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Rachel Franklin

Executive Director
Dr. Rachel Franklin started as Executive Director of the CGA in March of 2025, bringing more than 20 years’ experience as an educator and researcher in GIS, spatial analysis, and quantitative methods. Her research interests are in the sources and impacts...
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Devika Jain

AI and Data Science Manager
Devika Jain leads the area of Spatial AI and Data Science at the Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University. She has led the development of impactful solutions, including TSGI (a UN-recognized spatial well-being metric), RINX- a transformative...
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Jaiany Rocha Trindade

Visiting Fellow
Jaiany Rocha Trindade is a PhD candidate in Marketing at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA) at Harvard University. In 2025, she received the AMS Review–Sheth Foundation...
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Zifu Wang

Postdoctoral Researcher (May 2025 – Present)
Zifu Wang, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA), Harvard University, whose research lies at the intersection of Geographic Information Science (GIS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and computational science...
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Past Leadership

Peter Bol

Charles H. Carswell Professor in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, FAS
Founding Director of the Center for Geographic Analysis
Professor Bol led the Harvard University-wide effort to establish support for geospatial analysis in teaching and research. He was named first director of the Center for Geographic Analysis when it was founded in 2005. As a leading advocate and user of...
Peter-Bol

Jason Ur

CGA Director
2014 - 2020
Jason Ur is Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Geographic Analysis in 2014-2020. He studies the origins and development of cities and empires in the Middle East and their landscape impacts, using...
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Wendy Guan

Executive Director, 2007 - 2025
Wendy Guan was the Executive Director of the Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA) at Harvard University from 2007 until her retirement in February of 2025.
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Faculty Advisory Group

S (Subu) Subramanian

Chair, CGA Faculty Advisory Group
2020 - present
S V Subramanian is Professor of Population Health and Geography at Harvard University. He was the Founding Director of Graduate Studies for the interdisciplinary PhD program in Population Health Sciences at Harvard. He has published over 700 articles...
SV-Subramanian

Peter Bol

Charles H. Carswell Professor in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, FAS
Founding Director of the Center for Geographic Analysis
Professor Bol led the Harvard University-wide effort to establish support for geospatial analysis in teaching and research. He was named first director of the Center for Geographic Analysis when it was founded in 2005. As a leading advocate and user of...
Peter-Bol

Francesca Dominici

Clarence James Gamble Professor of Biostatistics, Population, and Data Science
Dr. Francesca Dominici is the Clarence James Gamble Professor of Biostatistics, Population, and Data Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of the Harvard Data Science Initiative at Harvard University. She is an elected...
francesca dominici

Ryan Enos

Professor of Government, FAS
Ryan D. Enos specializes in American Politics, Political Psychology, and Race and Ethnic Politics. He studies political behavior and intergroup attitudes through laboratory and field experiments and spatial analysis. He directs the Working Group in...
ryan enos

Jason Ur

CGA Director
2014 - 2020
Jason Ur is Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Geographic Analysis in 2014-2020. He studies the origins and development of cities and empires in the Middle East and their landscape impacts, using...
Jason-Ur

Rachel Weber

Emma Bloomberg Professor of Urban Planning
Rachel Weber is a professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She is an urban planner, political economist, and economic geographer who researches the relationship between finance and the built...
rachel weber

Robert Sampson

Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, FAS
As the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor at Harvard University, Robert Sampson is a leading sociologist whose research and teaching cover a variety of areas including crime, disorder, the life course, neighborhood effects, civic...
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Gary King

Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor
Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, FAS
Gary King is a leader in the development and application of empirical methods in many areas of social science research, with a focus on innovations which span the range from statistical theory to practical application. He is the founder of Dataverse, a...
gary king

Faculty Affiliates

Peter Bol

CGA Founding Director
2005 - 2014
Peter Bol is the Charles H. Carswell Professor in East Asian Languages and Civilizations. He was the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning (2013-2018). Prof. Bol led Harvard’s university-wide effort to establish support for geospatial analysis in teaching...
photo of Peter Bol

Lisa Berkman

Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and of Epidemiology
Director, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard School of Public Health
Doctor Berkman is an internationally-recognized social epidemiologist whose work focuses extensively on social and policy influences on health outcomes. As Director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies her research focuses on...
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Suzanne Blier

Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and Professor of African and African American Studies, Department of History of Art and Architecture, FAS
Professor Blier is the co-creator of Africamap, a platform for visualizing, analyzing, and sharing maps and geographic datasets related to African studies. This project expanded into Worldmap, which now hosts research for over 20,000 people, mostly...
Suzanne-Blier

John Brownstein

Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School
John Brownstein, Ph.D is Professor at Harvard Medical School, Chief Innovation Officer of Boston Children’s Hospital, and Director of the Computational Epidemiology Lab and the Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator at Boston Children’s. His work aims...
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Marcia Castro

Andelot Professor of Demography, Harvard School of Public Health
Marcia Castro is the Andelot Professor of Demography, chair of the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, and director of the Brazil Studies Program of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American...
Head photo of Marcia Castro.

Ryan Enos

Professor of Government, FAS
Ryan D. Enos specializes in American Politics, Political Psychology, and Race and Ethnic Politics. He studies political behavior and intergroup attitudes through laboratory and field experiments and spatial analysis. He directs the Working Group in...
ryan enos

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Alphonse Fletcher, Jr. University Professor
Director, Hutchins Center for African & African American Research
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder. Professor Gates is a founder of the AfricaMap and WorldMap map platforms which support a range of map-based collaborations...
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Andrew Gordon

Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History
Andy Gordon directs the extensive Japan Disasters Archive and JapanMap, which preserve both real-time information related to the Sendai earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, as well as accounts of the aftermath. As an historian of Modern Japan, Gordon is...
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Associates

Nicole Alexander

CGA Associate
May 2006 - present
Nicole is a Visiting Researcher at the CGA and was previously on the Oracle Spatial development team. She currently works for Apple. Nicole has a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara, a M.S. in Geographic and Geodetic...
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Scott Bell

CGA Associate and Lead Instructor, Harvard GIS Institute
2009 - present
Scott Bell is a Professor of Geography and Planning at the University of Saskatchewan and teaches GIS, Cartography, and human geography. He has expertise in advanced applications of GIS and GIS training for academic research. Scott holds an MA and PhD in...
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Jan Kinne

CGA Associate
Sep. 2022 - present
Jun. - Aug. 2019
Jan Kinne is a postdoc in the research area "Economics of Innovation and Business Dynamics" at the Center for European Economic Research. He studied geoinformatics at the University of Heidelberg and received his PhD from the University of Salzburg on the...
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Yuan Liao

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Yuan Liao is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Human Geography, Lund University, Sweden, supported by a three-year scholarship from Handelsbanken's Tore Browaldh Foundation. Her current research uses large-scale geolocation data and...
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Josh Lieberman

CGA Associate
2014 - present
Josh is a senior research scientist at CGA working on hydrographic ontologies and semantic applications for the U.S. National Map as part of the new Spatiotemporal Innovation Center. He also serves as a coordinating architect and initiative manager for...
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Bernd Resch

CGA Associate
Apr. 2013 - present
Bernd Resch is a Full Professor of Geo-social AI at IT:U and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University's Center for Geographic Analysis (USA). Bernd Resch did his PhD in the area of “Live Geography” (real-time monitoring of environmental geo-processes)...
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Anastasia Soukhov

CGA Associate
August 2026 - Present
Anastasia Soukhov is a Postdoctoral Associate and Fellow at Western University's School of Geography and Environment and the Human Environments Analysis Laboratory (HEAL). Her research examines transportation systems, mobility, spatial accessibility, and...
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Sisi Wang

CGA Associate
March 2024 - present
Siqin (Sisi) Wang is an Associate Professor at Spatial Sciences Institute, University of Southern California and a Visiting Scholar at Center of Geographic Analysis, Harvard University. Dr Wang is also affiliated to the Royal Melbourne Institute of...
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Matt Wilson

CGA Associate
Jul. 2014 - present
Matthew W. Wilson, PhD, is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Kentucky and Visiting Scholar at the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University. He co-founded and co-directs the New Mappings Collaboratory which studies and...
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Alumni

Erin Abbott

Undergraduate Research Fellow
Jun. - Aug. 2020, Jan. - Mar. 2021
Erin Abbott is a senior at the University of Chicago pursuing a major in Environmental and Urban Studies, minor in GIS, and pre-med. Following graduation, she will be heading to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai as part of the FlexMed program...
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Rafael Albuquerque

Visiting Fellow (Feb. 2025-June 2025)
Rafael Albuquerque is a Ph.D. candidate in Marketing at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), specializing in data analysis and modeling in consumer behavior research. His research explores how different levels of e-WOM (electronic word-of...
Rafael

Dorian Arifi

Visiting Fellow
Dorian Arifi is a PhD student at the University of Salzburg, holding an MSc in Data Science with a focus on Deep Learning and Database Management. He also earned a BSc in Economics from Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, specializing in statistical...
Dorian

Sarah Arnold

Undergraduate Research Fellow
Jun. 2018 - Aug. 2018
Sarah Arnold is a recent graduate of DePaul University, with bachelor degrees in both Geography and Philosophy. She is currently with the CGA as an NSF Research Fellow and is interested in exploring projects that involve a dynamic production of knowledge...
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Trevor Bloom

Undergraduate Research Fellow
May - Aug. 2021
Trevor Bloom is a senior at the University of Colorado Boulder pursuing a major in Environmental Studies with a minor in Geography. He is currently working as an NSF REU Student Research Fellow at the Center for Geographic analysis and is excited to be...
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Stacy Bogan

GIS Specialist
Aug. 2012 - Feb. 2018 Stacy came to Harvard in 2012 with work experience in consulting, the non-profit sector, and the arts. In the past she could be found guiding researchers through the Atlantic rainforest in Brazil, managing data for the remediation of...
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Eamon Breen

Undergraduate Research Fellow
Jun. - Jul. 2022
Eamon is an undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst studying Urban Geography and French, while also pursuing a minor in Sustainable Community Development. He is currently working at the Center for Geographic Analysis as an NSF REU Student...
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Samantha Carr

Undergraduate Research Fellow
May - June 2020; July - August 2019
Samantha Carr is pursuing a degree in Urban Systems at McGill University, concentrating in the fields of GIS, Urban Planning and Architecture. She is currently working with the Center for Geographic Analysis as an NSF REU Student Research Fellow and is...
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