Junfeng Jiao

Junfeng Jiao is an Associate Professor in the Community and Regional Planning Program at The University of Texas at Austin (UT). He is the founding director of Urban Information Lab, Texas Smart Cities, and UT NSF Ethical AI program, and a founding member of UT Austin's Good Systems Grand Challenge, a $10 million research initiative. He is a world-renowned expert in Smart City and a senior Fulbright Specialist on Smart City for the National Government of Egypt. His research has been widely reported by major media outlets such as ABC, Associated Press, CNN, Fox, NBC, NPR, New York Times, and Wired.

Dr. Jiao's research focuses on urban informatics, smart cities and ethical/generative AI. He develops and applies different technologies to understand the impact of urban environments on people’s daily living. He coined the term "transit deserts" measuring it in all US cities, and used various AI methods to investigated the spatial-temporal patterns of shared activities (Airbnb, Uber, Scooter, and bike sharing) in major urban areas. In addition, Dr. Jiao and his team have developed an autonomous robot delivery system at UT Austin, designed two cutting-edge generative AI systems -- ComputeGPT and OpenCityAI -- and deployed one active digital twin model for Austin, Austin Fire Digital Twin. He currently leads four Smart City projects.

Dr. Jiao received his PhD in urban design and planning and a master's degree in transportation engineering from the University of Washington. He has a Bachelor of Engineering degree in urban planning from Wuhan University; a Master of Engineering in architectural design, also from Wuhan University; and a Master of Science degree in geographic information systems from University of Twente.