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Zhongfu Ma

PhD candidate in Geography, Environment & Society at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

GIScience · Spatial Networks · Human Mobility · GeoAI
Zhongfu Ma is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography, Environment and Society at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and a member of the Geospatial Data Intelligence Lab.

Before I came to UMN, I obtained a B.S. in Geographic Information Science from China University of Geosciences, Beijing, and studied in the Spatial Data Science program at the Spatial Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California. My research interest lies in detecting, inferring, and interpreting spatial evolutionary processes, using current machine learning or deep learning methods.

Research Publications CV Google Scholar Email
Portrait of Zhongfu Ma

Research

“Πάντα ῥεῖ — Everything flows.”

Heraclitus

Spatial Evolution Modeling

Developing spatially explicit approaches to model dynamic changes, dependencies, and interactions across geographic systems.

Layered geographic snapshots connected by flows to represent spatial evolution.

Spatial Network Analytics

Developing computational approaches to characterize spatial interactions, network structures, and their variations across geographic systems.

Spatial flow layers and connected network motifs showing variations in geographic interactions.

Data-Driven Mechanism Discovery

Developing data-driven approaches to identify interpretable mechanisms and governing relationships underlying geographic processes.

Geographic observations leading to interpretable spatial and temporal governing relationships.
Explore U-Discovery

Selected Publications

GeoFM2Flow: Generating Human Mobility Flows from Geospatial Foundation Model Embeddings.

Ma, Z., Xiong, M., & Zhu, D.

In The 34th ACM International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, 2026.

Mapping behavioral spatial interactions from individual human mobility data.

Xiong, M., Wang, S., Ma, Z., Harris, J., & Zhu, D.

In Proceedings of The Second Annual Conference of Cartography and Geographic Information Society, 2026.

Gravity-informed deep flow inference for spatial evolution modeling in panel data.

Zhu, D., & Ma, Z.

International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 40(4), 918–946, 2026.

DOI PDF

A gravity-informed spatiotemporal transformer for human activity intensity prediction.

Wang, Y., Wang, Z., Zhang, F., Kang, C., Ruan, S., Zhu, D., Tang, C., Ma, Z., Zhang, W., Zheng, Y., Yu, P. S., & Liu, Y.

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 48(3), 2380–2397, 2026.

DOI

A Neural Fitting Method for Potential Differential Equations in Urban Dynamics.

Ma, Z., & Zhu, D.

In The 8th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on AI for Geographic Knowledge Discovery (pp. 45–48), 2025.

DOI

Collective flow-evolutionary patterns reveal the mesoscopic structure between snapshots of spatial network.

Ma, Z., & Zhu, D.

International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 39(1), 86–117, 2025.

DOI PDF

Towards the Spatial Evolution between Distribution Snapshots: A Network Perspective.

Zhu, D., & Ma, Z.

In X. Huang, X. Ye, K. Stewart, & S. Das (Eds.), Urban Human Mobility: Practices, Analytics, and Strategies for Smart Cities (Chapter 15). CRC Press. ISBN: 9781032821627, 2025.

DOI

Depicting urban multi-scale tourist activity spaces using digital footprints for smart destinations.

Zhao, P., Ma, Z., Chen, J., Law, R., Zhang, Y., & Liu, Y.

Current Issues in Tourism, 26(18), 2965–2980, 2023.

DOI

Under review

Discovering Governing Spatial Interaction Equations in Dynamic Urban Systems.

Ma, Z., & Zhu, D.

Transactions in GIS, 2026.

In progress

Spatial Interaction of Earth Embeddings.

Ma, Z., Xiong, M., & Zhu, D.

2026.

Preprint

Discovering governing spatial interaction mechanisms in dynamic urban systems.

Ma, Z., & Zhu, D.

arXiv:2603.19537 [physics.soc-ph], 2026.

arXiv PDF

Awards

2026
Fellowship

CLA Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota

2025
2nd Place

GISS-SG Student Honors Paper Competition

American Association of Geographers

2023
2nd Place

Robert Raskin Student Paper Competition

American Association of Geographers

Life

Here are some photos I have taken during travel, city walks, and everyday moments.

City walks
Landscapes
Travel
Photography
Daily life
Maps & notebooks

Email & CV

For research conversations or collaboration, email Zhongfu Ma through the University of Minnesota address below. A current CV is also available below.