Jonathan Li (He/Him)

Jonathan Li has served as a Professor Emeritus with the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo since September 2025. He also holds Adjunct Professor appointments across three departments including Civil and Environmental Engineering, Geography and Environmental Management, and Systems Design Engineering. He was a tenured Professor at Waterloo from January 2007 to August 2025. Prior to joining the University of Waterloo, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Regina (2000–2001) and later an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) from 2001 to 2006.

At Waterloo, he founded the Geospatial Intelligence and Mapping (GIM) Group, which has produced a wide array of novel AI-driven algorithms, workflows, software tools, and patented technologies licensed internationally. His research trajectory has evolved across decades: during the 2000s, he concentrated on AI-based mapping and object detection, with a focus on algorithm and software development using high-resolution multispectral and SAR satellite imagery. In the 2010s and early 2020s, his work shifted toward mobile LiDAR point cloud processing and 3D vision methodologies, applied to the creation of high-definition maps for autonomous driving, autonomous parking in indoor and underground facilities, and the development of digital twin cities.

Over the course of his academic career, Professor Li has played a pivotal role in training hundreds of undergraduates, over 130 thesis-based MSc and PhD students, 30 postdoctoral fellows, and more than 60 visiting scholars, many of whom are now established professionals in industry and academia around the globe. His extensive publication record includes more than 660 research papers, which have garnered over 33,000 citations and an h-index of 94. He is also the first inventor on over 30 granted patents.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) Academy of Science, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE), a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He has served as the Past President (since 2026), President (2024 and 2025), President-elect (2022 and 2023) and Vice President (2021) of the Canadian Institute of Geomatics (CIG).

• Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

• Airborne and Mobile Laser Scanning

• LiDAR Point Cloud Analytics

• Geospatial Artificial Intelligence

• Embodied AI and UAV Agents for Autonomous Mapping

• Earth Observation for HD Maps and Geoinformation

• 2000 PhD Geomatics Engineering, University of Cape Town, South Africa

• Distinctions and Recognitions

• Fellow, The Royal Society of Canada (RSC) Academy of Science

• Fellow, Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE)

• Fellow, Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC)

• Fellow, Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA)

• Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS)

• Awards

• 2025 Talbert Abrams Grand Award, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)

• 2023 Award of Excellence in Graduate Supervision, University of Waterloo

• 2023 Environment Research Excellence Award, Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo

• 2021 Geomatica Award, Canadian Institute of Geomatics (CIG)

• 2021 Roger Hoffer Membership Award, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)

• 2020 Samuel Gamble Award, International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS)

• 2020 Roger Hoffer Membership Award, Honorable Mention, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)

• 2019 Outstanding Achievement Award in Mobile Mapping Technology, International Committee of the ISPRS, International Association of Geodesy (IAG), International Federation of Surveyors (FIG), and Institute of Navigation (ION)

• 2018 Roger Hoffer Membership Award, Honorable Mention, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)

• 2016 Ford Bartlett Award, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)

• 2015 Ford Bartlett Award, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)

• 2013 Ford Bartlett Award, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)

• 2011 Talbert Abrams Award, First Honorable Mention, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)

• 2011 Ford Bartlett Award, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)

• 2008 ESRI Award, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)

• 2006 MDA (Triathlon) Award, Canadian Institute of Geomatics (CIG)

• 2003 New Opportunities Fund Award, Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)

• 2026-present: Editor-in-Chief, AI Plus, The Innovation Press

• 2025-present: Associate Editor, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (PE&RS), ASPRS

• 2024-present: Editorial Board, Geomatica, Elsevier

• 2020-present: Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation (JAG), Elsevier

• 2020-present: Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (TGRS), IEEE

• 2015-2024: Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (TITS), IEEE

• 2018-2022: Associate Editor, Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, Taylor & Francis

• 2015-2020: Associate Editor, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (JSTARS), IEEE

• 2014-2023: Editorial Board, International Journal of Cartography, Taylor & Francis

• 2007-2022: Associate Editor, Geomatica, Canadian Science Publishing

• Canadian Institute of Geomatics (CIG)

• 2026-present: Past President,

• 2024-2025: President

• 2022-2023: President-elect

• 2021: Vice President

• Canadian Remote Sensing Society (CRSS)

• 2020-2022: Director, Executive Board of Directors

• 2020-present: Founding Chair, CRSS –SCT Waterloo Region Chapter

• United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) Academic Network

• 2025-2026: Advisory Board, UN-GGIM Academic Network

• 2021-2022: Advisory Board of UN-GGIM Academic Network

• International Cartographic Association (ICA)

• 2019-2023: Chair and Canadian Representative, ICA Commission on Sensor-driven Mapping

• 2015-2019: Chair and Canadian Representative, ICA Commission on Sensor-driven Mapping

• 2011-2015: Vice Chair and Canadian Rep, ICA Commission on Mapping from Remote Sensor Imagery

• 2008-2011: Vice Chair and Canadian Representative, ICA Commission on Mapping from Satellite Imagery

• International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS)

• 2026-2030: Chair, ISPRS Working Group V/7 on GeoAI Skills, Curricula and Competencies

• 2024-2026: TCI Commission Advisory Board

• 2022-2024: Chair, ISPRS Working Group I/4 on LiDAR, Laser Altimetry and Sensor Integration

• 2016-2022: Chair, ISPRS Working Group I/2 on LiDAR, Air- and Spaceborne Optical Sensing

• 2012-2016: Chair, ISPRS ICWG I/Va on Mobile Scanning and Imaging Systems for 3D Surveying and Mapping

• 2008-2012: Chair, ISPRS ICWG V/I on Land-based Mobile Mapping Systems

• 2004-2008: Co-Chair, ISPRS Working Group IV/8 on Spatial Data Integration for Emergency Services

• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=7hyYxRkAAAAJ&hl=en

• DBLP: https://dblp.org/pid/85/6906-1

• ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7899-0049

• Scopus: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=57235557700

• Selected Journal Papers:

• 2027

• Lu D, Xie Q, Gao K, Du J, Xu W, *Li J, 2027. Oversegmentation-based efficient semantic annotation for large-scale LiDAR point clouds, Expert Systems with Applications, 334, 134503, 10.1016/j.eswa.2026.134503.

• Chen Z, Wu M, Chen H, Li D, Gou J, Chen K, Wang C, Li J, 2027. Fusion channel contrast attention and dual-layer multi-scale diffusion for color balance of large-scale earth observation imagery, Neurocomputing, 707, 135106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2026.135106.

• Shen W, *Wang L, Lu D, Chapman MA, *Li J, 2027. From ULS to ALS: Direct Inference and Fine-Tuning of Geometry-Only Deep Learning Models for Individual Tree Species Classification, Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing, Vol. 93, No. 6, doi: 10.14358/PERS.26-00049R4.

• 2026

• Xu, H., He, H., Zhang, Y., Zhang, D., *Li, J. 2026. Semantic change detection with constrained dual-head convolutional neural network architecture for oil/gas well site monitoring. Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing, 92(4), 647–658. https://doi.org/10.14358/PERS.25-00112R3

• Fatholahi, S. N., Yin, S., Hu, K., He, H., Yao, K. Y., Zhang, D., Lu, D., Teng, J., *Li, J. 2026. Comparative evaluation of deep-learning models for point cloud upsampling: Insights from indoor parking lot data set. Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing, 92(9), 833–847. https://doi.org/10.14358/PERS.25-00083R3

• Gao K, Gao Y, He H, Lu D, Xu L, Li J, 2026. NeRF: Neural Radiance Field in 3D vision, a comprehensive review, Computational Visual Media, DOI: 10.26599/CVM.2026.9450535.

• Hu KJ, *Chai Y, Asgarpour S, Boudreault R, Li J, Yin S, 2026. Methane detection of super-emitters by remote sensing and investigation of wind-driven bias in complex terrain: A multi-instrument analysis, Mining, 6(2), 35; https://doi.org/10.3390/mining6020035.

• Zhang Y, Chen C, Ruan C, *Ma L, Guan H, Yu Y, Li J, 2026. SAR-DETR: Multiscale granularity guided end-to-end SAR target detection Transformer, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, 10.1109/TAES.2026.3710962.

• Zhou Y, Zhao S, Yang X, Li R, Zhang T, Lan M, Chen C, Ma L, He H, *Li J, 2026. Data-driven vision-language models for remote sensing: A survey, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine, DOI: 10.1109/MGRS.2026.3696441.

• Liu W, He J, Zhong Y, *Yu Y, Luo Z, Guan H, Li J, 2026. Semi-supervised building change detection from bi-temporal remote sensing images leveraging visual-language models and consistency learning, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2026.3668369.

• Kang J, *Guan H, *Zhang D, Ma L, Wang L, Yu Y, Xu L, Li J, 2026. RPDNet: Street-level road pavement damage detection with a real-time anchor-free network, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 146, 105070, doi: 10.1016/j.jag.2025.105070.

• Luan S, He H, Li L, Yang H, Li LZ, Teng J, *Zhang D, Li J, 2026. A Mamba-based approach for super-resolution and speckle noise reconstruction of SAR images in remote sensing applications, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/JSTARS.2025.3641890.

• Chen Z, Li T, Li D, Gou J, Wang C, Gao K, *Li J, Gong Z, 2026. Leveraging multi-view images to learn domain-invariant discriminative embeddings for cross-view geo-localization, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, 36(3), pp. 2669–2684, DOI: 10.1109/TCSVT.2025.3613262.

• Chen Z, Qiu W, Wang H, Li D, Gou J, Chen K, Wang C, Li J, 2026. SFE-CapsNet: Spatial feature enhanced capsule networks for remote sensing object detection, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2025.3632353.

• Du J, Zelek J, Wang C, Han T, Chen Y, Zhang D, *Li J, 2026. PhyDAWS: Physically-inspired data augmentation with weather simulation for domain-generalized point cloud segmentation, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 149, 105280. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2026.105280.

• Wang L, Guan H, Lu D, Zhang D, *Li J, 2026. Exploring transfer learning for individual tree species classification by cross-platform point cloud, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 149, 105247. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2026.105247.

• Wang X, *Liu J, *Li J, Guo W, Qiu S, Kuang H, Zhou Z, Lyu X, 2026. Real-time positioning for ground moving targets based on monocular camera, International Journal of Digital Earth, 19(1), 2656537, https://doi.org/10.1080/17538947.2026.2656537

• Liu M, Zheng Y, *Zhou G, Li S, Tan Y, Zhang H, *Li J, 2026. Increase in economic losses despite a decline in fine particulate matter-related mortality reveals deepening inequality in China, Communications Earth & Environment, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03462-7.

• Yang H, Luo Z, Zhang D, *Li J, 2026. Constrained planar primitive segmentation for building component extraction from airborne LiDAR point clouds, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 147, 105182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2026.105182.

• Chen Y, *Li J, *Han T, Feng H, Chen J, Wang C, 2026. City-Facade: A city-level large-scale point cloud building façade dataset for semantic and instance segmentation, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 232, 675-688, DOI.10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2026.01.003.

• Liu W, Zhong Y, Zhao S, Luo S, Yu Y, Zhong X, Tan W, Guan H, *He H, *Li J, 2026. DEM super-resolution guided by high-resolution remote sensing images using multitask learning, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 146, 105099, doi: 10.1016/j.jag.2026.105099.

• Zhou Y, Chen J, Zhang Z, Huang P, Ding R, Zou Z, Gao P, Wei Y, Li K, Yang X, Jiang X, *Yang H, Li J, 2026. DVGBench: Implicit-to-explicit visual grounding benchmark in UAV imagery with large vision–language models, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 232, 831-847, doi. 10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2026.01.005.

• Shirmohammad M, *Pirasteh S, Sharifikia M, Li J, 2026. A novel CNN-LSTM-Attention model to forecast flood susceptibility under global climate scenarios, Gondwana Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2025.12.020.

• Kang J, *Guan H, *Zhang D, Ma L, Wang L, Yu Y, Xu L, Li J, 2026. RPDNet: Street-level road pavement damage detection with a real-time anchor-free network, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 146, 105070, doi: 10.1016/j.jag.2025.105070.

• Long X, Teng J, Zhu Z, Zhao S, Pu M, Shi R, Lv Y, Li J, Jing G, 2026. Co-MixPL: An optimized semi-supervised learning method for tunnel water leakage detection, Advanced Engineering Informatics, 71, 104263, doi:10.1016/j.aei.2025.104263.

• Gao K, Lu D, He H, Li L, Xu L, Chapman MA, *Li J, 2025. Gaussian Building Mesh (GBM): Extract a building’s 3D mesh with Google Earth and Gaussian Splatting, Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment, 40, 101807, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2025.101807.

• Liu B, Kang J, Guan H, *Ma L, Yu Y, Li S, Li J, 2026. Boundary-guided real-time semantic segmentation and pixel-level quantification of pavement cracks, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, T-ITS-25-02-0633.

• 2025

• De Souza M, De Souza MKG, Ramos APM, Oliveira L, Gonçalves WN, Li J, Liesenberg V, Marcato Jr J, José, 2025. Evaluation of altimetric accuracy of digital surface models in the urban area of Campo Grande/Brazil, Revista Tamoios, vol. 21, no. 1, DOI:10.12957/tamoios.2025.73697.

• Chen Z, Qiu W, Wang H, *Li D, Gou J, Chen K, Wang C, Li J, 2025. SFE-CapsNet: Spatial feature enhanced capsule networks for remote sensing object detection, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2025.3632353.

• Zhu C, Li JX, Li J, *Tang F, Lu D, Wang Y, Xue J, Yang Q, Su Y, 2025. Multi-KPConv: Deep learning-based LiDAR Point Cloud Ground Point Extraction for complex terrains on the Loess Plateau, International Journal of Digital Earth, vol. 18, no. 2, doi:10.1080/17538947.2025.2556235.

• *Osco, LP, Moriya EAS, Lima BC, Ramos APM, Marcato JJ, Gonçalves WN, Jorge LAC, Liesenberg V, Li J, Araujo ASF, Imai NN, Araujo FF, 2025. A machine learning framework for classifying thermal stress in bean plants using hyperspectral data, AgriEngineering, 7(11), 376, doi:10.3390/agriengineering7110376.

• Du J, Zelek J, *Zhang D, *Li J, 2024. 3DLCDM: Hybrid supervision for land cover discovery mapping of emerging urban structures in 3D remote sensing, Remote Sensing of Environment, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2025.115018.

• Du J, Zelek J, *Zhang D, *Li J, 2025. Gated multi-source fusion with geometric sequence modeling for novel urban structure discovery, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 230, 495-523. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2025.09.017.

• Teng J, Zhu Z, Pu D, Wang T, Zeng X, Snoussi H, *Shi R, Sheng QZ, He H, Li J, 2025. MSCSCNet: Multi-scale convolution selective context network with boundary supervision for semantic segmentation of remote sensing images, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/JSTARS.2025.3613049.Chen Z, Li T, Li D, Gou J, Wang C, Gao K, *Li J, Gong Z, 2025. Leveraging multi-view images to learn domain-invariant discriminative embeddings for cross-view geo-localization, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, DOI: 10.1109/TCSVT.2025.3613262.

• Gao K, Lu D, Li L, Chen N, He H, *Xu L, *Li J, 2025. Digital buildings analysis: 3D modeling, GIS integration, and visual descriptions using Gaussian splatting, ChatGPT/DeepSeek, and Google maps platform, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2025.3606333.

• Lu D, Gao K, Li J, *Zhang D, *Xu L, 2025. Exploring token serialization for Mamba-based LiDAR point cloud segmentation, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2025.3605383.

• Gao K, Lu D, Li L. Chen N, He H, Du J, *Xu L, *Li J, 2025. Instructor–Worker large language model system for policy recommendation: A case study on air quality analysis of the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 143, 104774. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2025.104774.

• Xu Z, *Li J, Cheng S, Rui X, Zhao Y, He H, Guan H, Sharma A, Erxleben M, *Xu L, 2025. Deep learning for wildfire risk prediction: Integrating remote sensing and environmental data, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 227, 632-677. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2025.06.002.

• Li JX, *Tang F, *Ma L, Zhu C, Gong Z, Ruhaiyem NIR, Li J, 2025. Point-SCT: A multi-scale spatial convolution-Swin transformer network for point cloud ground filtering in complex mountainous terrains, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2025.3573023.

• Lu D, Xu L, Zhou J, Gao K, *Li J, 2025. 3DLST: 3D learnable supertoken transformer for LiDAR point cloud scene segmentation, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 140, 104572. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2025.104572.

• Armin M, Turgay C, Zadeh M, Pirasteh S, Li J, 2025. Optimizing relative radiometric normalization: Minimizing residual distortions in multispectral bitemporal images using trust-region reflective and Laplacian pyramid fusion, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2025.3562276.

• Du J, Xu L, Ma L, Gao K, Zelek J, *Li J, 2025. 3D semantic segmentation: Cluster-based sampling and proximity hashing for novel class discovery, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 223, 274-295. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2025.03.001.

• He H, Xu L, Chapman MA, *Ma L, *Li J, 2025. Cost-effective high-definition building mapping: Box-supervised rooftop delineation using high-resolution remote sensing imagery, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 91, 225-239. DOI: 10.14358/PERS.24-00115R3.

• Zhou H, *He H, Xu L, Ma L, Zhang D, Chen N, Chapman MA, *Li J, 2025. A comparative study of deep learning methods for automated road network extraction from high-spatial-resolution remotely sensed imagery, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 91(3), 163–174.

• Lu D, Xu L, Zhou J, Gao K, Gong Z, *Zhang D, 2025. 3D-UMamba: 3D U-Net with state space model for semantic segmentation of multi-source LiDAR point clouds, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 136, 104401. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2025.104401.

• Gao K, Lu D, He H, Xu L, Li J, *Gong Z, 2025. Enhanced 3D urban scene reconstruction and point cloud densification using Gaussian splatting and Google Earth imagery, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2025.3536169.

• Du J, *Cai J, Wang Z, Su J, Huang M, Zelek J, Marcato Jr J, *Li J, 2025. MTCloud: Multi-type convolutional linkage network for point cloud instance segmentation, Expert Systems With Applications, 270, 126432.

• Zhang D, Tan W, Zelek JS, *Ma L, *Li J, 2025. SLAM-TSM: Enhanced indoor LiDAR SLAM with total station measurements for accurate trajectory estimation, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 1743-1753. DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2024.3504487.

• 2024

• Yang N, *Li L, Han L, Gao K, Qu S, Li J, 2024. Retrieving heavy metal concentrations in urban soil using satellite hyperspectral imagery, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 132, 104079. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2024.104079.

• Yasir M, Liu S, Pirasteh S, Xu M, Sheng H, Wan J, Figueiredo FAP, Aguilar FJ, Li J, 2024. YOLOShipTracker: Tracking ships in SAR images using lightweight YOLOv8, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 134, 104137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2024.104137.

• Chen Z, Chen H, Gao L, Li D, Wang C, Xu L, Mollaee S, *Li J, 2024. SECBNet: Semantic segmentation enhanced color balance network for optical satellite images, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2024.3509735.

• Chen Y, Cai G, Song Z, Liu Z, Zeng B, Li J, *Wang Z, 2024. LVP: Leverage virtual points in multi-modal early fusion for 3D object detection, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2024.3519386.

• Liu W, Kang Z, Lin Y, Liu J, *Yu Y, Li J, 2024. A multitask CNN-transformer network for semantic change detection from bitemporal remote sensing images, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2024.3486787.

• Wang L, Lu D, Xu L, Robinson DT, Tan W, Xie Q, Guan H, Chapman MA, Li J, 2024. Individual tree species classification using low-density airborne multispectral LiDAR data via attribute-aware cross-branch transformer, Remote Sensing of Environment 315, 114456. DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2024.114456.

• Du J, Zelek J, Li J, 2024. Weather-Aware Autopilot: Domain generalization for point cloud semantic segmentation in diverse weather scenarios, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 218, 204-219. Doi: 10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2024.09.006.

• Chen Z, Chen Y, Gao L, Li D, Xu L, Li J, Wang C, * Chen Y, 2024. DBARCT: Road extraction based on double branch architecture and random block coding transformer, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2024.3470818.

• Khankeshizadeh E, Mohammadzadeh A, Mohsenifar A, Moghimi A, Pirasteh S, Feng S, Hu K, Li J, 2024. Building detection in VHR remote sensing images using a novel dual attention residual-based U-Net (DAttResU-Net): An application to generating building change maps, Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment DOI: 10.1016/j.rsase.2024.101336.

• Li D, Zheng S, *Chen Z, Li J, Wang L, Du J, 2024. Local enhanced transformer networks for land cover classification with airborne multispectral LiDAR data, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2024.3432870.

• Ghorbanzadeh O, Shahabi H, Piralilou ST, Crivellari A, EC La Rosa L, Atzberger C, Ghamisi P, Li J, 2024. Contrastive self-supervised learning for globally distributed landslide detection, IEEE Access 36, 101336. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3449447.

• Yang N, *Li L, *Han L, Gao K, Qu S, Li J, 2024. Retrieving heavy metal concentrations in urban soil using satellite hyperspectral imagery, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 131, 104079.

• He H, Fan D, Wang R, Lyu X, Fu B, Huang Y, Sheng, J, 2024. Estimation of daytime all-sky sea surface temperature from Himawari-8 based on multilayer stacking machine learning, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation,132, 104055.

• Huang G, He K, Lyu X, Zang Y, Shu H, Zhao L, Li J, Wang C, 2024. High precision Intracity temperature estimation based on generated point clouds, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2024.3439608.

• Wang Z, Lv B, Li J, Yin S, 2024. Geothermal energy extraction–induced ground movement monitoring by InSAR and its implication for reservoir management, Journal of Energy Engineering, DOI: 10.1061/JLEED9.EYENG-5523.

• Feng H, Li W, Chen Y, *Ma L, *Li J, 2024. Crack-U2Net: Multiscale feature learning network for pavement crack detection from large-scale MLS point clouds, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2024.3436015.

• Li D, Zheng Z, Chen Z, Li J, Wang L, Du J, 2024. Local enhanced transformer networks for land cover classification with airborne multispectral LiDAR data, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2024.3432870.

• Lei X, Guan H, *Ma L, Liu J, Yu Y, Wang L, Dong Z, Ni H, Li J, 2024. DAAL-WS: A weakly-supervised method integrated with data augmentation and active learning strategies for MLS point cloud semantic segmentation, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 131, 103970.

• Chen Y, *Zhang S, Han T, Du Y, Zhang W, Li J, 2024. Chat3D: Interactive understanding 3D scene-level point clouds by chatting with foundation model for urban ecological construction, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 212,181-192.

• Afzal MK, *Liu W, Zang Y, Chen S, Afzal HMR, Adam JM, Yang B, Li J, Wang C, 2024. GeoSparseNet: A multi-source geometry-aware CNN for urban scene analysis, Remote Sensing, 16, 1827. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16111827.

• Lu D, Gao K, Xie Q, *Xu L, *Li J, 2024. 3DGTN: 3D dual-attention GLocal transformer network for point cloud classification and segmentation, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2024.3393845.

• Yuan W, *Cai Y, Li J, 2024. Hybrid network-based automatic seamline detection for orthoimage mosaicking, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2024.3393626.

• Du J, *Ma L, Li J, Qin N, Zelek JS, Guan H, *Li J, 2024. RdmkNet & Toronto-Rdmk: Large-scale datasets for road marking classification and segmentation, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2024.3394481.

• Pirasteh S, *Varshosaz M, Badrloo S, Li J, 2024. Developing an expansion-based obstacle detection using panoptic segmentation, Journal of Field Robotics, https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.22319.

• He H, Ma L, *Li J, 2024. HigherNet-DST: Higher resolution network with dynamic scale training for rooftop delineation, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2024.3362601.

• Lu D, Zhou J, Gao K, Du J, *Xu L, Li J, 2024. Dynamic clustering transformer network for point cloud segmentation, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 128, 103791.

• Chen K, *Guan H, Wang L, Yu Y, Zang Y, Qin N, Liu J, Li J, 2024. A feature perturbation weakly supervised learning network for airborne multispectral LiDAR point cloud classification, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 127, 103683.

• Jamali A, Ghamisi P, Roy SK, Li J, Beni LH, Pradhan B, 2024. Residual wave vision U-Net for flood mapping using dual polarization Sentinel-1 SAR imagery, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 127, 103662.

• Jamali A, Roy SK, Ghamisi P, Li J, 2024. Neighbourhood attention makes ResUNet encoder stronger for accurate road extraction, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2024.3354560.

• Wei, Z, Chen B, Wang W, Chen H, Wei M, Li J, 2024. Point transformer-based salient object detection network for 3D measurement point clouds, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2024.3355968.

• Khankeshizadeh E, Mohammadzadeh A, Arefi H, Mohsenifar A, Pirasteh S, Fan E, Li H, Li J, 2024. A novel weighted ensemble transferred U-Net based model (WETUM) for post-earthquake building damage assessment from UAV data: A comparison of deep learning- and machine learning-based approaches, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2024.3354737.

• Tan W, Qin N, Zhang Y, McGrath H, Fortin M, *Li J, 2024. A rapid high-resolution multi-sensory urban flood mapping framework via DEM upscaling, Remote Sensing of Environment, 301, 113956.

• 2023

• Li L, *Han L, Liu M, Gao K, He H, Wang L, *Li J, 2023.Coarse-to-fine matching via cross fusion of satellite images, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 125, 103574.

• Kang J, *Guan H, *Ma L, Wang L, Xu Z, Li J, 2023. WaterFormer: A coupled transformer and CNN network for waterbody detection in optical remotely-sensed imagery, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 206, 222-241.

• Qin N, Tan W, Guan H, Wang L, Fatholahi SN, *Hu X, *Li J, 2023. Towards intelligent ground filtering of large-scale topographic point clouds: A comprehensive survey, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 125, 103566.

• Li L, *Han L, Liu M, Gao K, He H, Wang L, *Li J, 2023. SAR-optical image matching with semantic position probability distribution, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2023.3330856.

• *Osco LP, Wu Q, Lemos EL, Gonçalves WN, Ramos APM, Li J, Marcato Jr J, 2023. The Segment Anything Model (SAM) for remote sensing applications: From zero to one shot, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 124, 103540.

• Sun W, Luo Z, *Chen Y, Marcato Jr J, Gonçalves W, *Li J, 2023. A click-based interactive segmentation network for point clouds, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2023.3323735.

• Chen Z, Deng L, Gou J, Wang C, Li J, Li D, 2023. Building and road detection from remote sensing images based on weights adaptive multi-teacher collaborative distillation using a fused knowledge, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 124, 103522.

• Chen Z, Luo Y, Chen Y, Wang J, Li D, Gao K, Wang C, Li J, 2023. BrGAN: Blur resist generative adversarial network with multiple joint dilated residual convolutions for chlorophyll color image restoration, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI:10.1109/TGRS.2023.3324993.

• Chen Z, Luo Y, Wang J, Li J, Wang C, Li D, 2023. DPENet: Dual-path extraction network based on CNN and transformer for accurate building and road extraction, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 124, 103510.

• Zang Y, Chen B, Xia Y, Guo H, Yang Y, *Liu W, Wang C, Li J, 2023. LCE-NET: Contour extraction for large-scale 3D point clouds, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2023.3315677.

• Ji X, Dong Z, Zhang L, *Wang M, Ma Y, Zhang J, Lin X, Li J, 2023. Waveform classification and index sharing based-effective intensity data extraction of airborne laser bathymetry, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 124, 103503.

• Adam JM, *Liu W, *Zang Y, Afzal MK, Bello SA, Muhammad AU, Wang C, Li J, 2023. Deep learning-based semantic segmentation of urban-scale 3D meshes in remote sensing: A survey, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 121, 103365.

• Liu X, *Chen Y, Wang C, Tan K, *Li J, 2023. A lightweight building instance extraction method based on adaptive optimization of mask contours, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 122, 103420.

• Chen S, Sui L, *Liu L, Liu X, Li J, Huang L, Li X, Qian X, 2023. NIRvP as a remote sensing proxy for measuring gross primary production across different biomes and climate zones: Performance and limitations, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 122, 103437.

• *Rastiveis H, Seydi ST, Chen Z, Li J, 2023. Seismic urban damage map generation based on satellite images and Gabor convolutional neural networks, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 122, 103450.

• Liu W, Lin Y, Liu W, *Yu Y, Li J, 2023. An attention-based multiscale transformer network for remote sensing image change detection, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 202, 599-609.

• Ding Q, Li P, Yan X, Shi D, Liang L, Wang W, Xie H, Li J, *Wei M, 2023. SCF-YOLO: Cross fusion YOLO for object detection in adverse weather with a high-quality real snow dataset, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2023.3285035.

• Li H, *Guan H, *Ma L, Lei X, Yu Y, Wang H, Delavar MR, Li J, 2023. MVPNet: A multi-scale voxel-point adaptive fusion network for point cloud semantic segmentation in urban scenes, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 122, 103391.

• Qin N, Tan W, Ma L, Zhang D, *Guan H, *Li J, 2023. Deep learning for filtering the ground from ALS point clouds: A dataset, evaluations and issues, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 202, 246-261.

• Jamali A, Roy SK, Li J, *Ghamisi P, 2023. TransU-Net++: Rethinking attention gated TransU-Net for deforestation mapping, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 119, 103332.

• Wang S, *Liu X, *Zhang Y, Li J, Zou S, Wu J, Tao C, Liu Q, Cai G, 2023. Semantic-guided 3D building reconstruction from triangle meshes, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 119, 103324.

• Luo Z, Guo L, Xiang H, *Li J, 2023. Road object detection for HD maps: Full-element survey, analysis, and perspectives, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 197, 122-144.

• Feng H, *Ma L, Yu Y, Chen Y, *Li J, 2023. SCL-GCN: Stratified Contrastive Learning Graph Convolution Network for pavement crack detection from mobile LiDAR point clouds, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 118, 103248.

• Zhang D, *Ma L, Gong Z, Tan W, Zelek J, *Li J, 2023. An overlap-free calibration method for LiDAR-camera platforms based on environmental perception, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 10.1109/TIM.2023.3244816.

• Liu W, *Zang Y, Xiong Z, Bian X, Wen C, Lu X, Wang C, Marcato Jr J, Gonçalves WN, Li J, 2023. 3D building model generation from MLS point cloud and 3D mesh using multi-source data fusion, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 116, 103171.

• Wang J, Wang L, Feng S, *Peng B, Huang L, Fatholahi SN, Tang L, Li J, 2023. An overview of shoreline mapping by using airborne LiDAR, Remote Sensing 15, 253. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rs15010253.

• Xu H, He H, Zhang Y, *Ma L, *Li J, 2023. A comparative study of loss functions for road segmentation in remotely sensed road datasets, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 116, 103159.

• Gonçalves DN, Marcato Jr J, Carrilho AC, Acosta PR, *Ramos APM, Gomes FDG, Osco LP, Oliveira MR, Martins JAC, Júniori GAD, Araújo MS, Li J, Roque F, Peres LF, Gonçalves WN, Libonati R, 2023. Transformers for mapping burned areas in Brazilian Pantanal and Amazon with PlanetCope imagery, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 116, 103151.

• Selected Conference Papers in Top CV/AI Conference Proceedings

• Ma L, Liu B, Li J, 2026. LaSA-Net: A Language-Guided Network for Outdoor Generalized 3D Referring Expression Segmentation, NeurIPS 2026 Main Track, accepted.

• Hu K, Knezevic J, Zhang P, Yin S, Li L, *Gao K, 2026. What or Where? Class–Site Geometry and Geographic Transfer in Geospatial Embeddings, NeurIPS Workshop on Advances in Representation Learning for Earth Observation, NeurIPS 2026 Workshop, accpted.

• Wu Q, Gao G, Clausi DA, Li J, *Chen Y, 2026. Preliminary Results for BuildingTwin: Geometrically Grounded Building-Centric 3D Reconstruction for Urban Digital Twins, CVPR Workshop 2026, Denver, Colorado.

• Xu Z, Cheng S, Wang L, He H, Sun W, Li J, *Xu L, 2026. BCWildfire: A long-term multi-factor dataset and deep learning benchmark for boreal wildfire risk prediction, AAAI-26, 40(46), pp. 39486–39494. DOI:10.1609/aaai.v40i46.41299.

• Wu, Q., Gao, K., Long, D., Clausi, D. A., Li, J., Chen, Y. 2026. Kitchentwin: Semantically and geometrically grounded 3D kitchen digital twins. CVPR Workshop, pp. 9632-9640.

• Huang X, Xu Z, Wu H, Wang J, Xia Q, Xia Y, Li J, Gao K, Wen C, Wang C, 2025. L4DR: LiDAR-4DRadar fusion for weather-robust 3D object detection, AAAI 2025, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 3806-3814.

• Xiong K, Xiang H, Xu Q, Wen C, Shen S, Li J, Wang C, 2024. Mining and transferring feature-geometry coherence for unsupervised point cloud registration, NeurIPS 2024, pp. 35468-35491, 10-15 December 2024, Vancouver, Canada, https://doi.org/10.52202/079017-1118.

• Liu W, Guo HY, Zhang W, *Zang Y, Wang C, Cheng, Li J, 2022. TopoSeg: Topology-aware segmentation for point clouds, IJCAI 22, July 23-29, Vienna, Austria, pp. 1201-1208.

• Qin N, Tan W, Ma L, Zhang D, *Li J, 2021. OpenGF: An ultra-large-scale ground filtering dataset built upon open ALS point clouds around the world, CVPR Workshop 2021, pp. 1082-1091.

• Deng S, Feng Y, *Wei M, Xie H, Chen Y, Li J, Zhang X, Qin J, 2021. Direction-aware feature-level frequency decomposition for single image deraining, IJCAI-21, pp. 650-656.

• Zhong Z, Lin Z, Bidart R, Hu X, Daya IB, Li Z, Zheng W, *Li J, Wong A, 2020. Squeeze-and-attention networks for semantic segmentation, CVPR 2020, pp. 13065-13074.

• Tan W, Qin N, Ma L, Li Y, Du J, Cai G, *Li J, 2020. Toronto-3D: A large-scale mobile LiDAR dataset for semantic segmentation of urban roadways, CVPR Workshops 2020, pp. 202-211.

• Li Q, Chen S, *Wang C, Li X, Wen C, Cheng M, Li J, 2019. LO-Net: Deep real-time LiDAR odometry, CVPR 2019, pp. 8473-8482.

• Shen X, *Wang C, Yu Z, Li X, Li J, Wen C, Cheng M, He Z, 2019. RF-Net: An end-to-end image matching network based on receptive field, CVPR 2019, pp. 8132-8140.

• Chen H, Luo Y, *Cao L, Zhang B, Guo G, Wang C, Li J, Ji R, 2019. Generalized zero-shot vehicle detection in remote sensing imagery via coarse-to-fine framework, IJCAI-19, pp. 687-693.

• Chen Y, Wang J, *Li J, *Lu C, Luo Z, Xue H, Wang C, 2018. LIDAR-Video Driving Dataset: Learning Driving Policies Effectively, CVPR 2018, pp. 5870-5878.

• News with Geospatial Intelligence and Mapping Lab