Sheng Wang - Academic Profile

I am currently a PhD student in Geography (Geographical Information Science) at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, supervised by Prof. Di Zhu.

My research focuses on Human Mobility Networks, Social Sensing, Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI), Urban Computing, Spatial Interaction Modeling, and Graph-based Learning. I am passionate about uncovering spatial process heterogeneity and developing advanced graph neural network architectures for geospatial applications.

Education

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (Minneapolis, MN, USA)
Ph.D. in Geography (Geographical Information Science)
Supervisor: Prof. Di Zhu

Sep 2023 - Present
East China Normal University (Shanghai, CN)
M.S. in Cartography & Geographic Information System
Supervisor: Prof. Xi Chen

Sep 2020 - Jun 2023
Anhui University (Hefei, CN)
B.S. in Geographic Information Science
B.Eng. in Computer Science & Technology

Sep 2016 - Jun 2020

Publications

PhD Period (2023 - Present)

2026 Zhu, D., & Wang, S., & Peng, L. "Uncovering spatial process heterogeneity from graph-based deep spatial regression." ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 232, 509-523. [Paper] [Code]
2025 Wang, S., & Zhu, D. "A Context-Enhanced Graph Neural Network Operator for Edge-to-Edge Learning in Human Mobility Networks." Transactions in GIS, 29(7), e70154. [Paper] [Code]
2025 Wang, S., & Zhu, D. "A Deep Origin-Destination Flow Imputation Model Informed by the Visitation Law in Human Mobility." Proceedings of the 33rd ACM SIGSPATIAL. [Paper]
2025 Wang, S., & Zhu, D. "Inferring human movements after snowfall: a weather-informed graph learning model for flow redistribution in mobility networks." International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 1-29. [Paper] [Code]
2024 Wang, S., & Zhu, D. "Edge Activating Module: Learning edge-to-edge features for mobility flow generation." Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on AI for Geographic Knowledge Discovery (pp. 11-14). [Paper]

Master Period (2020 - 2023)

2023 Wang, S., Chen, X., Ma, D., Wang, C., Wang, Y., Qi, H., ... & Liu, M. "MIANet: Multi-level temporal information aggregation in mixed-periodicity time series forecasting tasks." Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 121, 106175. [Paper] [Code]
2022 Chen, X., Wang, S., Gao, H., Huang, J., Shen, C., Li, Q., ... & Liu, M. "Comparison of deep learning models and a typical process-based model in glacio-hydrology simulation." Journal of Hydrology, 615, 128562. [Paper]
2022 Chen, X., Huang, J., Wang, S., Zhou, G., Gao, H., Liu, M., ... & Qi, H. "A new rainfall-runoff model using improved LSTM with attentive long and short lag-time." Water, 14(5), 697. [Paper]

Experience & Academic Service

Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Research Assistant Mar 2023 - Jul 2023

Data cleaning and pre-processing for graph-structured data (molecular graphs and road network).
Dataset construction and management.
Graph Neural network training and tuning on high-performance computing clusters.

Teaching Assistant (University of Minnesota)

GEOG 5564 Urban GIS (2026 Spring - Present)
GEOG 1502 Mapping Our World (2023 Fall - 2025 Fall)

Community Contribution

PC Member: The 8th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on AI for Geographic Knowledge Discovery (November 2025).

Grants & Awards

ACM SIGSPATIAL Student Travel Award (2025)
GES Student Travel Annual Grant (2023, 2024, 2025)
East-China Normal University Post-Graduate Scholarship - Third Prize (2022)
National Post-Graduate Mathematic Contest in Modeling - Third Prize (2020)
China Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling - Second Prize (2018)
Anhui University Undergraduate Scholarship - Third Prize (2018)