Liu Liu

Liu is a Ph.D. candidate at DUSP studying Computational Urban Science. Being a scientist with eight years of entrepreneurship in data-driven urban science research, he focused on the built environment and human behavior analysis by adopting computer vision. Before returning to MIT, he is the founder of CitoryTech Co LTD., a start-up in urban computation specializing in urban visual AI. Besides, he was an external expert for Tencent and a consultant for the World Bank. In addition, he was an urban researcher at the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, and he accumulated a design background through six years of design training and practice. Recently, Liu also completed an internship as an applied scientist at Amazon, working with the AGI Foundation.

His projects cover a wide variety of topics in data science. For example, he led the Big Data chapter of National City Planning in China using 1 billion Tencent LBSN data and evaluating how walkable many Chinese cities are using images of the streets. He delivers China's national street greenery ranking based on billions of street view images from 300 cities. He also led his team in developing a public opinion analytic platform based on social media. His team developed a series of tools for urban image collection, processing, and AI photography.

His academic interests lie in the interdisciplinary fields of AI, machine learning, optimization, urban computing, and urban design research. His current study evaluates the physical environment and its impacts on public activities. Specifically, he is keen on probing into pedestrians' emotional responses, memories, and experiences of the built environment with urban imagery data analysis.