Two GEOG Ph.D. Students Selected for Wylie Dissertation Fellowship

This side-by-side image features two portraits of men in different settings. On the left, a man wearing a grey baseball cap, glasses, and a dark grey graphic t-shirt stands outdoors against a soft-focus background of city lights and a bridge at twilight. On the right, a man with dark hair and glasses stands indoors in front of a scientific research poster; he wears a blue and white striped button-down shirt over a grey t-shirt and is adorned with multiple conference lanyards and a blue "AAAS Member" badge.

Fellowship provides support for dissertation completion and high-impact research.

The Graduate School has awarded the Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship to Ph.D. students Jiaxun Sun and Zhili Li, recognizing their outstanding research and academic potential. The fellowship provides a $15,000 stipend, tuition coverage and fee credits for one semester, giving students dedicated time to focus on completing their dissertations. Fellows may also request reimbursement for their individual student health insurance.

Jiaxun Sun’s dissertation evaluates the economic, environmental and public health co-benefits of U.S. energy transition measures. Using scenario and empirical analyses across national, state and metropolitan scales, his research asks how clean energy policies impact the environment, public health and the economy and whether benefits are distributed equitably across communities. The fellowship will allow Sun to focus on finalizing his dissertation, completing high-impact manuscripts and preparing for presentations at the ISIE and AAAS 2027 conferences.

Zhili Li is addressing a key challenge in geospatial information science: generalizing machine learning models trained on limited localized data to new regions and sensing platforms. His work aims to reduce reliance on labeled data while maintaining robust performance across applications such as poverty mapping, Arctic monitoring and crop analysis. The Wylie Fellowship will give Li time to complete experiments, integrate his research into a cohesive dissertation and prepare publications that advance geospatial AI and Earth observation.

Last year, Ph.D. student Shuo Xu was selected to complete her dissertation, “AI-Driven Integration of Satellite, In-Situ, and Simulation Data to Enhance Uni-temporal and Multi-temporal Variable Estimation,” reflecting ongoing doctoral research support in the department. She is set to defend it soon.

Photo collage: Zhili Li on the left and Jiaxun Sun on the right, courtesy of both

Published on Thu, 04/02/2026 - 11:37