Yichun Fan

Doctoral Candidate

Yichun Fan is a PhD candidate in Urban Economics at MIT Department of Urban Studies & Planning. She is also a researcher at MIT Center for Real Estate and Sustainable Urbanization Lab (SUL)

Yichun conducts research in urban and environmental economics, blending methods from urban science, behavioral science, and computational social science. Her research focuses on urban adaptation to environmental and health risk. Her recent projects study individual and collective behaviors in response to climate risks, and the integration of behavioral insights in policy and infrastructure decisions to bolster urban climate resilience. Her work typically utilizes high-resolution urban big data coupled with computational methods and possesses a significant focus on protecting disadvantaged communities to achieve equitable resilience. She has published papers in journals like Nature Human Behavior, Nature Communications, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Environmental Research Letters, and Cities. You can find more information about her ongoing research projects on her personal website