Prof. Di Zhu Awarded the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship by the University of Minnesota

McKnight Land-Grant Professor 2026-2028

The University of Minnesota has awarded Professor Di Zhu the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship. The central purpose of the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship program is to strengthen the University’s faculty for the future. The program is designed to advance the careers of outstanding junior faculty members who have been identified as having the potential to make significant contributions to their departments and to their scholarly fields.

Zhu, assistant professor of GIScience, joined the Department of Geography, Environment, and Society in 2021. He specializes in Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI), spatial statistics, and urban social sensing. As the director of the Geospatial Data Intelligence (GeoDI) Lab, his research explores the human-environment complexities within urban socioeconomics, mobility, transportation, and population systems. His work has appeared in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Scientific Data, and ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, among others. He teaches spatial analysis, as well as GIS and GeoAI.

Dr. Zhu is a core member of the Data Science and AI Hub and an executive committee member of the Master of GIS (MGIS) program. He is an affiliate of the Minnesota Population Center and a scholar at the Center for Transportation Studies. Before joining the faculty, Zhu was a visiting lecturer at SpaceTimeLab, University College London. Dr. Zhu holds a Ph.D. in Cartology and GIScience, a B.S. in Geographic Information Systems, and a B.Ec. in Economics, all from Peking University. 

More information on the 2026-28 McKnight Land-Grant Professors

March 25, 2026