Current Projects
2025-2028, Optimizing SCDOT’s Permitting, Mitigation, and Compliance Systems to Improve Project Delivery. PI: Sicheng Wang. South Carolina Department of Transportation, $800,000
2025-2026, Spatial and Social Disparities in Subjective and Objective Transportation Accessibility to Healthcare Services and Their Relationship to Long COVID. PI: Sicheng Wang. NIH Social, Behavioral, & Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC), $30,000
2025-2026, Assessing the Impacts of Telehealth on Perceived Accessibility for Prenatal Care in Rural South Carolina. PI: Sicheng Wang. South Carolina Center for Rural and Primary Health (SC CRPH), $50,000
2025-2026, Examining Social Disparities in Travel Barrier: Development of A Perception-Based Travel Difficulty Index. PI: Andrew Kaczynski, Co-I: Sicheng Wang. USC Collaborative for Health Equity Research (CHEER)/USC Office of the Vice President for Research, $34,830
2025-2026, Stepping towards health equity: Evaluating the accessibility and quality of sidewalks as social determinants of health in Columbia, SC. PI: Andrew Kaczynski, Co-I: Sicheng Wang. Advanced Support for Innovative Research Excellence (ASPIRE)- I/USC Office of the Vice President for Research, $14,983
2025-2026, Collaborative Research on Health Implications of Hyper-Urbanization in Tanzania. PI: Sicheng Wang. Walker Institute Faculty Research Grant Award, $2,000
2023-2025, South Carolina Center for Excellence in Addiction. PI: Christina Andrews, Co-I: Sicheng Wang. South Carolina Department of Alcohol & Other Drug Abuse Services (DAODAS)/General Assembly, $114,942
2024-2025, SPARC: Exposure in Food Markets: Can Thermal Remote Sensing Be Used to Predict Changes in Food Availability and Cost? PI (Graduate Student: Morgan Boncyk, Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior; Primary Advisor – Christine Blake). USC Office of the Vice President for Research, $4,995
2023-2024, Mapping Oyster Reef habitat to Support Resilience Planning and Wild Oyster Harvest in South Carolina. CORE SC, PI: Susan Wang, Co-PI: Gary Sundin (SCNDR), $49,902
2023-2024, A High-resolution inventory of South Carolina’s waterbodies from multi-source GIS products. USGS/SC Water Resources Center Competitive Grant, PI: Susan Wang, Co-PI: Alex Pellett (SCDNR), $33,448
2023-2028, The impacts of HIV-related service interruption during COVID-19 pandemic in South Carolina, National Institutes of Health (NIH). PI: Shan Qiao, Co-I: Zhenlong Li, Jiajia Zhang, Bankole Olatosi, Sharon Weissman, Xiaoming Li, $3,521,311
2022-2023, 3D Visualization of hydrogeologic raster surfaces in South Carolina Hydrogeologic Framework, USGS National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program, PI: Susan Wang, $34,982
2023-2024, Developing a SMART Geospatial Tool to Classify Building Archetype at Community Level towards Digital-Twins of Disaster Resilience (DTDR), Taylor Geospatial Institute, Institutional PI: Zhenlong Li (PI: Grace Yan at Missouri S&T), $200,000
2023-2024, Visualizing and predicting new and late HIV diagnosis in South Carolina: A Big Data approach, National Institutes of Health (NIH), PI: Xiaoming Li & Jiajia Zhang, Co-I: Zhenlong Li, Bankole Olatosi, Sharon Weissman, Shan Qiao, $699,122
2023, Accessibility Analysis and Visualization of the Children and Youth Foster Care in South Carolina, South Carolina Department of Social Services (SCDSS). PI: Zhenlong Li, $34,479
2023-2024, Neighborhood Mobility Assessment for Wheelchair Users using Street View Imagery and Artificial Intelligence, USC SPARC Program. 135400-23-62713, PI: Zhenlong Li (Student: Huan Ning), $4,992
2023-2024, Examine the geographic and racial disparities of COVID-19 impact on obesity-related behaviors using cellphone-based place visitation data. Social, Behavioral, & Economic COVID Coordinating Center, University of Michigan, PI: Zhenlong Li, Co-I: Andrew T Kaczynski, Shan Qiao, Bankole Olatosi, Jiajia Zhang, Xiaoming Li, $29,948
2022-2024, Developing a novel network-based big data approach to measure healthcare utilization disparity: A feasibility study, BDHSC Pilot Project Program, BDHSC-PP2022-16, PI: Zhenlong Li, Co-I: Shan Qiao, Bankole Olatosi, Jiajia Zhang, $30,000
2022-2023, sUAS and 3D Marsh Modeling to Support NASA’s New Satellite (SWOT) for Coastal Topography and Marsh Sustainability of South Carolina, NASA EPSCoR, PI: Susan Wang, $34,963.
2022-2023, Delivering Comprehensive and Sustainable HIV/AIDS Clinical and Community Services to Achieve HIV Epidemic Control in Subnational Units in Nigeria (USC Subaward), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), PI: Xiaoming Li., Co-PI: Bankole Olatosi, Co-I: Zhenlong Li, Shan Qiao, Jiajia Zhang, Sharon Weissman et al., $444,172
2022-2023, Creating a GIS-Based Siting Tool for South Carolina Mariculture Site Selection, NOAA Sea Grant Consortium at South Carolina, PI: Zhenlong Li, Co-PI: Susan Wang, $52,620 ($34,993 from SeaGrant, $17,627 match).
2022-2023, A novel data-driven approach to empirically link structural racism and healthcare access and utilization in South Carolina, UofSC OVPR Racial Justice and Equity Research Program, 135400-22-59464, PI: Zhenlong Li, Co-I: Shan Qiao, Bankole Olatosi, Jiajia Zhang, Xiaoming Li, $14,981
2021-2026, Patterns and Predictors of Viral Suppression: A Big Data Approach, National Institutes of Health (NIH), R01AI164947, MPI: Bankole Olatosi and Jiajia Zhang; Co-I: Zhenlong Li, Sharon Weissman, Jianjun Hu, Xiaoming Li, ~$3,500,000
2021-2023, Identifying a COVID-19 patient cohort based on Twitter data for PASC symptoms analysis, BDHSC Pilot Project Program, #BDHSC-2021-11, PI: Shan Qiao, Co-PI: Zhenlong Li, Sharon Weissman Liang Chen, Xiaoming Li, $34,000
2020-2023, Big Data Driven Clinical Informatics & Surveillance – A Multimodal Database Focused Clinical, Community, & Multi-Omics Surveillance Plan for COVID19, National Institutes of Health (NIH), 3R01AI127203-04S1, Co-PI: Zhenlong Li, Sharon Weissman, Neset Hikment, Jianjun Hu, Jiajia Zhang; MPI: Xiaoming Li and Bankole Olatosi, $1,252,550,
2020-2023, Rapid Estimation of Visitation Activities in U.S. National Parks by Mining Big Social Media Data, USC ASPIRE Program, PI: Zhenlong Li, Co-PI: John Kupfer, $14,846
2019-2023, Big Data Analytics of HIV Treatment Gaps In South Carolina: Identification and Prediction, National Institutes of Health (NIH), R01AI127203, Co-I: Zhenlong Li, Sharon Weissman, Jianjun Hu, Jiajia Zhang; MPI: Xiaoming Li, Bankole Olatosi, $3,259,978
2019-2023, Big Data Health Science Center (BDHSC), University of South Carolina Excellence Initiative, Zhenlong Li (Co-I, Geospatial Core), Xiaoming Li (PI), ~$3,000,000
Past Projects
2020-2022, RAPID: Monitoring the Spatial Spread of COVID-19 through the Lens of Human Movement using Big Social Media Data, National Science Foundation (NSF), 2028791, PI: Zhenlong Li , Co-PI: Dwayne E. Porter, Xiaoming Li, $108,717
2022, Deep Learning for human settlement mapping with historical aerial photographs since the 1930s: a case study in Charleston, SC. College of Arts and Sciences, UofSC, PI: Susan Wang, $9,984.
2020-2022, A Preliminary Study of using Social Media to Monitor the Spatial Propagation of COVID-19 and Quantify the Effectiveness of the Control Measures, USC COVID-19 Funding Initiative, PI: Zhenlong Li, Co-PI: Bankole Olatosi, Xiaoming Li, $13,017
2020-2021, Faculty for the Future Fellowship Program, Assessment of riparian Corridor attributes in an urban watershed., Schlumberger Foundation, PI: Susan Wang; Visiting scholar: Dr. Adetoro. $89,000.
2019-2021, Drone-implemented integration of GIScience, Engineering, and Community Education for Dam Safety Assessment. USC Office of the Vice President for Research ASPIRE-II Integration Program, PI: Susan Wang; Co-PI: Sasanakul, Civil Engineering; Co-Is: Vitzilaios, Mechanical Engineering; Marsh, History; Brown, Biology. $96,797.
2019-2020, SPARC: A deep learning supported flood mapping framework that integrates remote sensing and social sensing. USC Office of the Vice President for Research, PI: Susan Wang; Graduate Student: Xiao Huang, $4,996.
2020-2021, XSEDE Startup Resource Allocation for A Scalable Online Visual Analytic System for Big Climate Data Analysis, National Science Foundation (NSF), PI: Zhenlong Li, $1,051.2
2019-2020, Analyzing Human Mobility Patterns during Hurricane Matthew Evacuation using Social Media Data, SPARC Program (Ph.D. researcher: Yuqin Jiang), PI: Zhenlong Li (Advisor), $5,000
2018-2019, Social Sensing of Disaster Extents and Impacts of Hurricane Florence, Horne LLP, PI: Zhenlong Li, $5,000
2018-2019, Satellite observations of marsh dieback events and potential environmental influences along coastal SC, 2000-2017. SC NASA EPSCoR, PI: Susan Wang, $24,981.
2017-2019, Enhancing Situational Awareness by Mining Big Social Media Data in Near-real Time for Disaster Management, USC OVPR ASPIRE I, PI: Zhenlong Li (PI), Amir Karami (Co-PI), $14,861
2018, Prototyping a Near Real-time Flood Mapping System with Social Sensing and Big Data Computing, CAS Research Initiative, PI: Zhenlong Li, $3,400
2017-2018, Computational Analysis of the US 2016 Presidential Election in Social Media, USC Office of The Provost, Co-PI: Zhenlong Li, Amir Karami (PI), $15,019
2017, When, Where, and Who: Mining Billions of Tweets to Understand Celebration Patterns of US Holidays, Magellan Scholar Program (Student Researcher: Daniel Newsome), PI: Zhenlong Li, $3,000
2017, Prototyping a Cloud-based Spatial Web Portal for Parallel Analytics of Big Climate Data, Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Testbed, PI: Zhenlong Li, Fei Hu (Co-I), $6,981
2016-2017, Developing a High-Performance Query Analytical Framework for Big Climate Data Analysis, USC ASPIRE I, PI: Zhenlong Li, $14,457
2015-2016, Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Flood Impact by Integrating Satellite, VGI, and Social Media Data: Rapid Assessment of the October Flood, USC Floods Seed Grant, PI: Zhenlong Li; Co-PI: Cuizhen Wang, Christopher Emrich, Diansheng Guo, $18,477
2015-2016, A Computational Framework for Tracking Reports, Opinions, and Feelings of People in Social Media Before, During and After a Natural Disaster, USC Floods Seed Grant, Co-PI: Zhenlong Li, Amir Karami (PI), $12,000
2014-2015, Hadoop Middleware for Processing Big Climate Data, NASA/NSF, Co-PI: Zhenlong Li, Chaowei Yang (PI), $45,000