👋 About Me

Hi, I am a Ph.D. candidate, advised by Dr. Yiqun Xie, in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park. My primary research focus on remote sensing and knowledge-guided machine learning, with expertise in satellite data retrieval, data downscaling and multi-source data fusion, all-weather product development, and addressing related scientific challenges.
I have authored over 11 papers in top journals and international AI conferences with a total of Google Scholar citations 390+. I also serve as a reviewer for 14 international journals, including Remote Sensing of Environment (RSE) (Impact Factor = 11.4).


🔥 News

  • 2025.09:  🎉🎉 Paper accepted by NeurIPS 2025!
  • 2025.01:  🎉🎉 RSE paper among top 1% most cited (Environment/Ecology 2021); dataset 46,000+ accesses worldwide!
  • 2024.12:  🎉🎉 Paper published in IEEE MGRS (Impact Factor = 16.4)!
  • 2024.12:  🎉🎉 Paper published in STOTEN (Impact Factor = 8.0)!
  • 2024.03:  🎉🎉 Paper published at AAAI 2024!

🔬 Research Interests

  • Remote Sensing and Multi-Source Data Fusion
  • Knowledge-guided Machine Learning and Quantitative Analysis
  • Time Series Modeling and Forecasting

🛠 Technical Skills

  • Programming & Analysis: Python, MATLAB, IDL; High Performance Computing for Large-Scale Datasets
  • Geospatial Tools: Google Earth Engine, ArcPro, ENVI, ERDAS
  • Machine Learning & Frameworks: PyTorch, TensorFlow; Data-Driven and Knowledge-Guided Machine Learning
  • Specialties: Temporal Prediction, Spatiotemporal Data Analysis, and Ecosystem Modeling

📝 Peer-review Publications

AI Conference Paper Journal Paper   

NeurIPS 2025

CarbonGlobe: A Global-Scale, Multi-Decade Dataset and Benchmark for Carbon Forecasting in Forest Ecosystems

Zhihao Wang, Lei Ma, George Hurtt, Xiaowei Jia, Yanhua Li, Ruohan Li, Zhili Li, Shuo Xu, Yiqun Xie.
NeurIPS 2025 (Datasets and Benchmarks Track), San Diego, CA, 2025.

AAAI 2024

SimFair: Physics-guided fairness-aware learning with simulation models

Zhihao Wang, Yiqun Xie, Zhili Li, Xiaowei Jia, Zhe Jiang, Aolin Jia, Shuo Xu.
The 38th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI’24), Vancouver, Canada, 2024.

RSE 2021

A new land surface temperature fusion strategy based on cumulative distribution function matching and multiresolution Kalman filtering

Shuo Xu, Jie Cheng.
Remote Sensing of Environment, 2021, Impact Factor = 11.4.

  • Ranked among the top 1% most-cited Environment/Ecology articles published in 2021.
  • Method adopted to generate a widely used temperature dataset, accessed 46,000+ times worldwide.
STOTEN 2024

A novel approach to estimate land surface temperature from Landsat top-of-atmosphere reflective and emissive data using transfer-learning neural network

Shuo Xu, Dongdong Wang, Shunlin Liang, Aolin Jia, Ruohan Li, Zhihao Wang, Yuling Liu.
Science of The Total Environment, 2024, Impact Factor = 8.0.

  • Publicly released the algorithm on Google Earth Engine to support broader applications.
Int. J. Appl. Earth Obs. Geoinf 2023

Assessment of gridded datasets of various near surface temperature variables over Heihe River Basin: Uncertainties, spatial heterogeneity and clear-sky bias

Shuo Xu, Dongdong Wang, Shunlin Liang, Yuling Liu, Aolin Jia.
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 2023, Impact Factor = 8.6.

IEEE GRSL 2023

Assessing the reliability of the MODIS LST product to detect temporal variability

Shuo Xu, Dongdong Wang, Shunlin Liang, Yuling Liu, Aolin Jia.
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, 2023, Impact Factor = 4.4.

RS 2021
IEEE JSTARS 2019

Reconstructing all-weather land surface temperature using the Bayesian maximum entropy method over the Tibetan Plateau and Heihe River Basin

Shuo Xu, Jie Cheng, Qiang Zhang.
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 2019, Impact Factor = 5.3.

IEEE GRSM 2024

Advances in methodology and generation of all-weather land surface temperature products from polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites: A comprehensive review

Aolin Jia, Shunlin Liang, Dongdong Wang, Kanishka Mallick, Shugui Zhou, Tian Hu, Shuo Xu.
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine, 2024, Impact Factor = 16.4.

ESSD 2023

Global hourly, 5 km, all-sky land surface temperature data from 2011 to 2021 based on integrating geostationary and polar-orbiting satellite data

Aolin Jia, Shunlin Liang, Dongdong Wang, Lei Ma, Zhihao Wang, Shuo Xu.
Earth System Science Data, 2023, Impact Factor = 11.6.

IEEE JSTARS 2020

A stepwise downscaling method for generating high-resolution land surface temperature from AMSR-E data

Qiang Zhang, Ning Wang, Jie Cheng, Shuo Xu.
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 2020, Impact Factor = 5.3.


🏅 Honors and Awards

  • 2025  🏆 Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship, University of Maryland
  • 2025  🏆 Excellence in Graduate Research Award (Second Place), University of Maryland
  • 2025  🏆 GIS Summer Research Fellowship, University of Maryland
  • 2024  🏆 Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant Award, University of Maryland
  • 2024  🏆 Excellence in Graduate Research Award (Third Place), University of Maryland
  • 2024  🏆 Jingli Yang Summer Research Fellowship, University of Maryland
  • 2024  🏆 Graduate Travel Fellowship, University of Maryland
  • 2022  🏆 Jacob K. Goldhaber Travel Grant, University of Maryland
  • 2021  🏆 Outstanding Graduate, Beijing Normal University
  • 2021  🏆 Zhou Tingru Scholarship, Beijing Normal University
  • 2020  🏆 National Scholarship, Beijing Normal University
  • 2019  🏆 First-class Scholarship, Beijing Normal University

📖 Educations

  • 2021.09 - Present Ph.D. candidate, Geographic Information Science and Cartography, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
  • 2018.09 - 2021.06 M.S., Cartography and Geography Information System, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
  • 2014.09 - 2018.06 B.S., Remote Sensing Science and Technology, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China

💼 Work Experience

Research Assistant - University of Maryland

Sep 2021 - Present
NSF-Funded Project: Improving the Ecosystem Demography (ED) Model with AI

  • Developed transformer-based ML frameworks integrating satellite, model, and in-situ data.
  • Generated time series of carbon stocks, fluxes, and vegetation dynamics.
  • Applied spatial and temporal analyses.

NOAA-Funded Project: Enhancing NOAA VIIRS Land Surface Temperature Product

  • Designed multi-source fusion algorithms for all-weather VIIRS LST product.
  • Built data pipelines (Python/TensorFlow, MATLAB) to produce global LST time series and anomalies.
  • Presented findings at AGU and AMS conferences.

🎙️ Conference Presentations

  • Shuo Xu, Yuling Liu. All-weather VIIRS LST: Machine Learning Based Methodology and Experiment. 105th American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Jan 2025.
  • Shuo Xu, Yuling Liu, Yunyue Yu, Peng Yu. All-weather LST: Methodology and Experiment on JPSS/VIIRS LST. American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, Washington DC, Dec 2024.
  • Shuo Xu, Yuling Liu, Yunyue Yu, Peng Yu. All-weather LST: Methodology and Experiment. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Cooperative Research Programs (CoRP) Science Symposium, Madison, WI, July 2023.
  • Shuo Xu, Dongdong Wang. Validation of gridded datasets of near-surface temperature variables: uncertainties, spatial heterogeneity and clear-sky bias. American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, Chicago, IL, Dec 2022.
  • Yuling Liu, Yunyue Yu, Peng Yu, Shuo Xu, Heshun Wang. Validation and Performance Evaluation of NOAA-21 VIIRS LST Product. American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, Washington DC, Dec 2024.

🤝 Peer Review & Scientific Committee Service

  • IGARSS 2025 Scientific Committee
  • GeoIndustry Workshop at ACM SIGSPATIAL 2025 Program Reviewer
  • Reviewer for 14 International Journals, including:
    • Remote Sensing of Environment
    • Earth System Science Data
    • IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
    • Scientific Data
    • IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
    • GPS Solutions
    • Scientific Reports
    • Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
    • Environmental Monitoring and Assessment
    • Earth Science Informatics
    • Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing
    • Discover Cities
    • Environmental Earth Sciences
    • Theoretical and Applied Climatology