Fang Ren holds a joint faculty position between the College and the School of Business & Society. She teaches GIS courses on GIS fundamentals, spatial statistics and analysis, GIS for business, and GIS project scope and development. She has supervised a variety of graduate projects that applied cutting-edge GIS technologies and advanced location analytics.

In addition to supporting the GIS Program development and campus-wide GIS-related activities and initiatives, Ren has also engaged in professional services in the wider community. Her efforts include serving on the review panel for the National Science Foundation's Computing Research Infrastructure program and the Education Committee for the International Association of Chinese Professionals in Geographic Information Sciences.

Her publications have appeared in Transactions in GIS, Journal of Transport Geography, Time and Society, Environmental Planning B, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, and Geografiska Annaler.

Research
Ren's research focuses on transportation and urban geography, addressing theoretic and substantive questions through the integration of fundamental theories and geographic information technologies. She has conducted extensive research on the impact of the Internet on human activity, including travel patterns, geovisualization of spatio-temporal phenomena, and the integration of space-time measures into location modeling to improve service times and efficiency.

Courses Taught

BUSB 433: GIS for Business
GIS 611: Fundamentals of Geographic Information
GIS 616: Statistics and Spatial Analysis
GIS 665: Advanced Topics in Spatial Analysis
GIS 691: Project Concept and Scope
GIS 695: Project Implementation
GIS 696: Project Completion
Workshop:  Transportation of Geography

Selected Publications

2016    Ren, Fang. Activity Space. In Oxford Bibliographies in Geography. Barney Warf (ed). New York: Oxford University Press. June 28, 2016.

2016    Ren, Fang. Density Estimation. In The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Forthcoming.

2014    Fang Ren, Daoqin Tong, and Mei-Po Kwan. Developing Space-Time Measures of Demand for Service with Individual Activity–Travel. Geografiska Annaler B. 96(4): 299–401.

2014    Tim Schwanen, Mei-Po Kwan, and Fang Ren. The Internet and the Gender Division of Household Labor. The Geographical Journal, 180(1): 52-64.

2013    Fang Ren, Mei-Po Kwan, and Tim Schwanen. Investigating the temporal dynamics of the Internet activities using survival analysis. Time & Society, 22(2): 186-215.  

2012    Daoqin Tong, Fang Ren and James Mack. Locating Farmers’ Markets with an Incorporation of Spatio-Temporal Variation. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 46(2): 149–156.