News
September of 2025:
We are now seeking a couple of highly capable and motivated research assistants/associates at the Ph.D. or Master’s level to contribute to projects on localization and mapping using image and LiDAR sensors. The ideal candidates will have strong skills in signal processing, computer vision/photogrammetry, and machine learning, together with excellent programming abilities. A background in physics or electrical engineering is highly desirable. Strong written and oral communication skills are also expected.
If this opportunity aligns with your background and interests, please feel free to contact us.
Sept. 2025, Our lab is excited to share OpenGSAM, the open repository for our recent developments. Please visit the GitHub location at https://github.com/OpenGSAM. Link.
Sept. 2025, Congratulations to Shuang Li, whose work “Total solution for simultaneous pose and correspondence estimation of drone images in urban environments” is published by ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Link.
Apr. 2025, Zhixin Li passed his Ph.D defense. Congratulations!
Oct. 2024, Xiangxi Tian passed her Ph.D defense. Congratulations!
Oct. 2024, Congratulations to Shuang Li, whose work “Drone Image Pose Estimation With Simultaneous Road Correspondence” is published by IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. Link.
Apr. 2024, Congratulations to Xiangxi Tian, whose work “ICESat-2 Controlled Integration of GEDI and SRTM Data for Large-Scale Digital Elevation Model Generation” is published by IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. Link.
Feb. 2024, Congratulations to Zhixin Li, whose work “Urban Visual Localization of Block-Wise Monocular Images with Google Street Views” is published by Remote Sensing. Link.
May 2023, Renfei Li passed her Master defense. Congratulations!
Dec. 2022, Congratulations to Xiangxi Tian, whose work “Detection of Signal and Ground Photons from ICESat-2 ATL03 Data” is published by IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. Link.
Dec. 2022, Congratulations to Jie Shan, whose work “Democratizing Photogrammetry: an Accuracy Perspective” is published by Geo-spatial Information Science. Link.
Aug. 2022, Congratulations to Shuang Li, whose work "Adaptive Geometric Interval Classifier" is published by ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information. Link.
Mar. 2022, Congratulations! Agustin Quinones, a recent Ph.D student, was awarded the Graduate School Summer Research Grant for the Summer 2022 semester
Jan. 2022, Congratulations to Zhixin Li, whose work “RANSAC-based Multi Primitive Building Reconstruction from 3D Point Clouds” is published by ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Link.
Celebrate, Sharing and Thank You !
Year 2021 is almost over in a largely the same way as 2020. A slight difference is that we taught in person in classroom with masks, while most of year 2020 was virtual. It seems we are getting slightly better, or become used to the COVID. As for research, some of the achievements could be shared as below.
In lidar system and data processing across different platforms, we have developed a georeferencing and self-calibration approach for airborne lidar system by using only digital elevation models; the method is accurate and reliable. Collaborating with leading industry we are able to evaluate the potential of Doppler lidar to detect and track static and moving objects. The work demonstrates the prospect for this new technology. Our long time work on urban scene reconstruction from point clouds has been extended considerably. Common to several of our recent publications, the central idea is to introduce model fitting into building/object reconstruction (airborne and indoor). We have tested hundreds of buildings to demonstrate its superior performance. Finally, our work in lidar has been extended or returned to earth observation from space. We presented a comprehensive evaluation on recent ICESat-2 data products considering multiple factors, including time, season, viewing direction, terrain, as well as landcover. As a result, initial correction model was developed.
For geospatial data science, we have been focused on methodologic development for exploration of urban structure and dynamics using big data. Local regression (geographically weighted regression), kernel method, and network representation have been studied and applied to traffic accident modeling, urban hotspot detection, periodic visiting patterns, and COVID pandemic.
Most of the aforementioned work can be found on Google Scholar. Thank you, the team for the hardwork, as well as the collaborators and the sponsoers. All the best wishes for the coming new year !
Sept. 2021, Congratulations to Mengchi Ai and Zhixin Li, whose work “Topologically Consistent Reconstruction for Complex Indoor Structures from Point Clouds” is published by Remote Sensing. Link.
Sept. 2021, Congratulations to Wenyuan Zhang and Zhixin Li, whose work “Optimal Model Fitting for Building Reconstruction from Point Clouds” is published by the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing. Link.
Jul. 2021, Congratulations to Xiaoyi, whose work “Detection and Tracking of Pedestrians Using Doppler LiDAR” is published in Remote Sensing at Link.
Jun. 2021, Congratulations ! Yujua Zhu (co-advised with GDSP faculty) has been selected to the "2021 Esri Innovation Program Students of the Year". Her work is on "Mapping COVID-19 Pandemic and Lockdown in Chicago". The Storymap is the 2nd on the list at https://storymaps.arcgis.com/collections/e4b934a7b30b46dfbf8464e22f468ea5. For the Geodata Science for Professionals (GDSP) program at Purdue, you may visit https://www.eaps.purdue.edu/gdsp/index.html.
Aug. 2021, Congratulations ! Shuang Li, a recent Ph.D student, was awarded the Frederick N. Andrews Fellowship managed by the Graduate School.
Apr. 2021, Peter Sawall passed his Master defense. Congratulations!
Apr. 2021, Yujia Zhu passed her Master defense. Congratulations!
Apr. 2021, Qing Su passed her Master defense. Congratulations!
Apr. 2021, Ce Wang’s paper “Non-stationary Modeling of Microlevel Road-curve Crash Frequency with Geographically Weighted Regression” is published by the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information. Link.
Apr. 2021, Ce Wang successfully defended his Master's thesis. Congratulations!
Apr. 2021, Xiaoyi Peng successfully defended his Master's thesis. Congratulations!
Mar. 2021, Agustin Quinones has received the College of Engineering Outstanding Service Scholarship, for his service to the graduate community, the School, the CoE and the University. Congratulations!
Jan. 2021, Xiangxi Tian’s paper "Comprehensive Evaluation of the ICESat-2 ATL08 Terrain Product" was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. Congratulations! Link.
Dec. 2020, Zilong Yang successfully defended his Master's thesis. Congratulations!
Nov. 2020, Qinghua Li’s paper “Georeferencing with Self-Calibration for Airborne Full-Waveform Lidar Data Using Digital Elevation Model” has been accepted by Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing.
Nov. 2020, Zhixin Li has received a scholarship award from the Roland S. Corning II Memorial Fund.
Oct. 2020, Ce Wang, Xiaoyi Peng and Yujia Zhu's work about analyzing the impact of COVID-19 on human mobility is appeared in CE IMPACT magazine- Fall 2020. Link.
Aug. 2020, Ce Wang and Zhixin Li will present their papers at the coming ISPRS Virtual Event (August 31 to September 2).
Aug. 2020, Xiangxi Tian et al.'s paper “Pavement Macrotexture Determination Using Multi-View Smartphone Images” was accepted by Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing.
May. 2020, Serkan Ural's paper “Min-cut based semantic building labeling for airborne lidar data” was accepted by XXIVth ISPRS Congress.
May. 2020, Xiaoyi Peng and Ce Wang's paper “Exploration of Municipal Mobility Using Smartphone GPS Data” was accepted by XXIVth ISPRS Congress.
May. 2020, Zhixin Li and Wenyuan Zhang's paper “Holistic parametric reconstruction of building models from point clouds” was accepted by XXIVth ISPRS Congress.
May. 2020, Paul M Cleary passed his Master defense. Congratulations!
May. 2020, Kevan Tissue passed his Master defense. Congratulations!
May. 2020, Dr. Shan has been appointed as Courtesy Professor of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS).
Jan. 2020, Dr. Shan receives ASPRS Fairchild Photogrammetric Award.Link.
Nov. 2019, Zhixin Li passed his Master defense. Congratulations!
Nov. 2019, Xiangxi Tian passed her Master defense. Congratulations!
Nov. 2019, Dr. Shan's paper “Metaheuristic pansharpening based on symbiotic organisms search optimization” was accepted by ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.Link.
Sept. 2019, Dr. Shan's paper “A Genetic Algorithm Solution to the Gram-Schmidt Image Fusion” was accepted by International Journal of Remote Sensing.Link.
Aug. 2019, Integrating Geospatial Information Across Disciplines" has been selected as one of the winning proposals for the second round of funding in the Education Ecosystem sector of Purdue's Integrative Data Science Initiative. Link.
Jun. 2019, Bo Xu and Zhixin Li's paper on urban semantic 3D reconstruction has been awarded the best paper at the IEEE/ISPRS Workshop on Large Scale Computer Vision for Remote Sensing Imagery in conjunction with CVPR 2019. Link.
Apr. 2019, Yuchi Ma passed his Master defense. Congratulations!
Dec. 2018, Ke Liu passed her Master defense. Congratulations !
Dec. 2018, Qinghua Li passed his Ph.D defense. Congratulations !