Sun, Laixiang

Bio

Laixiang Sun is a Professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland (UMD). He previously served as Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Financial and Management Studies at SOAS University of London, and as a Senior Economist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. In February 2010, he was elected a Fellow (Academician) of the Academy of Social Sciences (www.acss.org.uk). He has authored more than 260 publications spanning regional science and regional economics, environmental science and management, business and management studies, integrated modelling, and ecological economics, with articles appearing in Nature, PNAS, and several Nature portfolio journals, including Nature Sustainability, Nature Climate Change, Nature Food, Nature Water, Nature Cities, and Nature Communications. He has served as principal investigator or leading scientist on more than 30 research projects funded by the European Commission; NASA (USA); the British Academy, Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Society, ESRC, EPSRC, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO), and the Met Office (UK); and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Ministry of Education (China). He has taught more than 20 university courses across China, the Netherlands, Finland, the UK, and the USA, covering systems analysis, economics, econometrics, calculus, corporate governance, international business, and urban geography. In the 2025 Research.com ranking of top scientists in Economics and Finance, he was ranked 1,756 globally and 1,000 in the United States (https://research.com/scientists-rankings/economics-and-finance/).