I am Professor at the Department of Technology and Built Environment of University of Gävle, affiliated to the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) via the KTH Research School.

I have served as Senior Lecturer in the same institution for seven years before. I worked at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University as Assistant Professor for nearly three years. I was Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), University College London.

I hold Ph.D in geographic information systems from the University of Utrecht and the International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Science (ITC), the Netherlands, M.Sc. in remote sensing and computer cartography from Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping, Beijing, and B.Sc. in cartography from Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Mapping, China.

My teaching and research interest is geographic information science and systems in general, or geospatial analysis and modeling linking to visual and computational tools in particular. I have (co-)authored many articles in the GeoInformatics field. I am the primary developer of space syntax software Axwoman for urban morphological analysis. I am the founder and the chair of the International Cartographic Association Commission on Geospatial Analysis and Modelling, the main coordinator of the Nordic Network in Geographic Information Science, and an associate editor of the international journal Computers, Environment and Urban Systems.

In the past, I had been also involved in the development of a national geographic information system and a computer aided colour design system. I was postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Geographic Sciences, Free University of Berlin.