Junfeng Jiao is an assistant professor in the Community and Regional Planning program and founding director of Urban Information Lab at UTSOA. He received his PhD in Urban Design and Planning from the University of Washington.

His research focuses on using information technologies (GIS, GPS, Drone, smart phone, social media, wearable devices, etc) to quantify built environments and understand its impact on people’s behaviour (e.g. travel, physical, eating etc) and its health consequence. Specifically, he is interested in understanding how people react and reflect the built environments where they live, work, and play. He has investigated how built environments affect people's access to grocery stores, transit facilities, and bicycle infrastructures, and how people describe cities in cyber space through Twitter. He firstly coined the term of Transit Desert and developed various measurement methods. His intensive research on Transit and Food Deserts were widely reported by the Associated Press, Yahoo, MSN, NBC, NPR, USA today, Finance and Commerce, City Lab, The Conversation, Chicago Tribute, San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times, Seattle Times, Seattle Met, Dallas News, Houston Chronicle, Austin Statesman, Texas Tribune, Wired etc.

He has worked on projects funded by the NIH, USDOT, UT Austin, Intel, WSDOT, RWJF, and others. These works have been published in journals like Journal of Urban Planning and Development, Journal of Urban Design, Journal of Urban Technology, Land Use Policy, American Journal of Public Health, Journal of Transport and Land Use, and Journal of Public Transportation etc. He is the co-chair for Analytical Methods & Computer Applications track at the ACSP conference and on the editorial board of Transportation Research Part D, PLOS one, and AIMS Public Health. He published six book chapters through the Springer and Routledge.