PhD Opportunities in Spatial Analysis in United States

Fully funded PhD opportunity in Environmental Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Boston’s School for the Environment, associated with Dr. Shijuan Chen’s GEOSIA Lab (Geospatial and Earth Observation Science for Innovation and Application). The research focuses on multi-hazard risks and resilience, including wildfires, extreme heat, and flooding; land use and land cover change such as forest degradation, urbanization, and agriculture; and machine learning and artificial intelligence appli...

The GATOR Lab at the University of Florida is potentially recruiting a funded PhD student for Fall 2027. This four-year research assistantship is intended for a motivated researcher who wants to develop as a geospatial scientist and contribute to the growth of the lab. The main research directions include GeoAI and scalable analytics, including next-generation GeoAI, large language models for geospatial reasoning, governed agentic AI, and cloud-native geocomputation. The lab is also interested i...

Fully funded PhD opportunity in Urban Flood Modeling and Scientific Machine Learning at Stony Brook University (Department of Civil Engineering, New York, USA). The position is in the research group of Te Pei , Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering. The project focuses on computational urban flood modeling with opportunities to combine hydrologic and hydrodynamic modeling , geospatial data , and scientific machine learning for water-related systems. Research topics include urban flooding and ...

Fully funded PhD position at the University of Florida in the Department of Landscape Architecture , School of Landscape Architecture and Planning, in Dr. Chendi Zhang’s Research Group. The project focuses on landscape architecture , environmental resilience , aging-in-place , and geospatial analytics , with an emphasis on quantitative methods , mixed methods , and modeling. This is a strong fit for applicants interested in spatial analysis, planning, design research, and socially relevant envir...

PhD opportunity in Tropical Forest Dynamics and Carbon Cycling at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville , in Dr. Lei Ma’s Research Group within the School of Natural Resources and Herbert College of Agriculture. This graduate research assistantship focuses on tropical forest dynamics , carbon cycling , and related ecosystem processes. The post highlights a strong fit for students with backgrounds in environmental science , geospatial analysis , quantitative fields, or computational disciplines....

Fully funded PhD position in Tropical Forest Dynamics and Carbon Cycling at the University of Tennessee Knoxville , USA, in the School of Natural Resources within the Herbert College of Agriculture . This opportunity is a strong fit for students interested in environmental science , biology , earth science , geospatial analysis , remote sensing , Earth observations , programming , modeling , and other quantitative/computational approaches to ecosystem research. Eligibility highlights: applicants...

#PhD opportunity in Architectural Engineering at the Laboratory for Healthy, Environmental, and Resilient Buildings (HERB-Lab) , Department of Civil, Environmental, & Architectural Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) , USA. This is a fully funded PhD position starting in Fall 2027 . The student will join Prof. Nancy Ma 's lab and work on research at the intersection of building science , energy modeling , building data analytics , and occupant-centric building design and operation...

Arizona State University’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning is recruiting a PhD student for a fully funded graduate research assistantship on the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation-funded project Shadow Grids: Gas, fuel deliveries, and backup generation in an electrifying US . The project examines how natural gas, deliverable fuel, and backup generator networks persist and expand alongside efforts to decarbonize US homes. The student will conduct field-based research in Arizona and pol...

Ph.D. opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte for Spring 2027 in the Infrastructure and Environmental Systems (INES) Ph.D. program. The project focuses on railway safety and railroad trespassing prevention, with research directions including AI and machine learning for trespassing risk assessment, mmWave radar sensing and edge AI for detecting and tracking people near railway infrastructure, digital twins and simulation for railway safety analysis, GIS and spatial analytics ...