Waishan Qiu

Spring 2019 seminar: Ph.D. candidate, regional science

Trained as an interdisciplinary urban designer and researcher, Waishan Qiu is now pursuing a Ph.D. in regional science at Cornell University. His research interests lie in developing informatics and analytics tools to investigate the dynamic interaction between people and space. Being interested in cybernetics, sensing technology, spatial analysis, and data visualization, he has been involved with various data-driven research projects across the world in places such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the U.S., and China. His research explores the mobility, accessibility, shareability, resilience, and sustainability issues in urban context. Prior to joining Cornell, he worked as a research associate at MIT. He has received several degrees from top universities in China, the UK, and the U.S., including a master of city planning from MIT in 2017, a master of architecture in urban design with distinction from Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London in 2015, and a bachelor of engineering in urban planning from Tongji University in 2013. His previous lab experience includes MIT SENSEable City Lab, MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism, MIT Civic Data Design Lab, MIT Samuel Tak Lee Real Estate Entrepreneurship Lab, and Evidence for Policy Design at Harvard Kennedy School.