New CNRE faculty
Fangzheng Lyu
Fangzheng Lyu is a new assistant professor in the Department of Geography, joining the department in August as a teacher and researcher in Geographical Information Systems (GIS).
“My research focus is I aim to leverage geospatial AI and geospatial big data for urban sustainability and resilience. My primary interest lies in advancing GIS science, geospatial data science and computational science to tackle complex geospatial problems and understand multi-scale urban dynamics using heterogeneous geospatial big data.”
Lyu earned his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2024. The concentration of doctoral research was to integrate machine learning with cyberGIS to predict and analyze urban heat islands effect and develop models for extracting information from heterogenous spatiotemporal data such as urban sensor data and social media data. He worked in the CyberGIS lab at the University of Illinois prior to coming to Virginia Tech.
After earning a Bachelor’s of Engineering in Computer Engineering from the University of Hong Kong in 2018, Lyu earned an M.S. in geography from Illinois in 2021.
Lyu is teaching Principles of GIS and Geospatial Data Science.
Matt Baker
Matthew Baker returns to academia after eight years in industry, following his graduation with a Ph.D. in packaging from Virginia Tech in 2016. He joined the faculty in the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials in July as a collegiate assistant professor. His dissertation research explored the application of beam on elastic foundation to the interaction between a corrugated box and pallet deck board.
He is teaching courses in computer aided design in packaging; packaging machinery and production; and packaging design for global distribution.
Baker worked as a senior packaging scientist at Beyond Meat, and as a senior packaging engineer at Coca-Cola and Danone/White Wave.
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