Maoran Sun is an urban researcher and data scientist. Prior to attending Cambridge, he worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a research fellow. Maoran holds Master’s in Design Studies and Urban Design from Harvard University and Bachelor in Urban Planning from Southeast University.
He is interested in building energy, environmental justice and urban studies with an approach of combining geospatial data science and deep learning.
s.maoran[at]outlook.com
ms2895[at]cam.ac.uk
Education
University of Cambridge | PhD in Urban AI
2022-2025
Harvard Graduate School of Design | Master of Design Studies
2017-2020
Harvard Graduate School of Design | Master of Architecture in Urban Design
2017-2020
Southeast University | Bachelor of Engineer, Urban Planning
2012-2017
Selected Publications
Thermal Jeopardy
M Sun, R Bardhan. Identifying Hard-to-Decarbonize houses from multi-source data in Cambridge, UK. Sustainable Cities and Society. 2024
M Sun, C Hou, Q Li, F Zhang, R Bardhan, Q Zhao. Deciphering Exterior: Building Energy Efficiency Prediction with Emerging Urban Big Data. Under Review
M Sun, J Pan, Q Zhao, R Bardhan. Heat Stress Dichotomy: Long-term Adaptation and Acute Shock in London Domestic Environments. Under Review
Urban Analytics & GeoAI
A Salazar-Miranda, F Zhang, M Sun, P Leoni, F Duarte, C Ratti. Smart curbs: Measuring street activities in real-time using computer vision. Landscape and Urban Planning. 2023
M Sun, C Han, Q Nie, J Xu, F Zhang, Q Zhao. Understanding building energy efficiency with administrative and emerging urban big data by deep learning in Glasgow. Energy and Buildings. 2022
M Sun, F Zhang, F Duarte, C Ratti. Understanding architecture age and style through deep learning. Cities. 2022
M Sun, F Zhang, F Duarte. Automatic building age prediction from street view images. 7th IEEE International Conference on Network Intelligence and Digital Content (IC-NIDC). 2021
Great Streets
KM Jang, H Suh, FG Haddad, M Sun, F Duarte, Y Kim. Urban street clusters: unraveling the associations of street characteristics on urban vibrancy dynamics in age, time, and day. Urban Informatics. 2024
B Cao, M Sun*, R Bardhan. Measuring shaded bike lanes for heat stress mitigation with deep learning: A case study in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Urban Climate. 2024
L Liu*, Y Tu, M Sun*, H Lyu, P Wang, J He. Spatial Quality Measurement and Characterization of Daily High-Frequency Pedestrian Streets in Xi’an City. Land. 2024
Z Fan, T Su, M Sun, A Noyman, F Zhang, AS Pentland, E Moro. Diversity beyond density: Experienced social mixing of urban streets. PNAS nexus. 2023
T Su, M Sun, Z Fan, A Noyman, A Pentland, E Moro. Rhythm of the streets: A street classification framework based on street activity patterns. EPJ Data Science. 2022
Full list of publications can be found here.
Experience
MIT Senseable City Lab | Research Fellow, Research Affiliate
2020-present
HKS Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation | Research Assistant
2019-2020
Harvard GSD City Form Lab | Research Assistant
2019
Harvard FAS Chinese Art and Media Lab | Research Assistant
2018-2019
OMA | Student Researcher
2018
Editorial service
Reviewer
Information Fusion | Journal of Transport Geography | Environmental Science & Technology | IET Intelligent Transport System |
Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems | Transactions in Urban Data, Science, and Technology | IEEE Access |
GIScience & Remote Sensing | Springer Geography and Sustainability Research Book Series | Transportation Research Record |
Signal, Image and Video Processing | Geo-spatial Information Science | Journal of Computational Design and Engineering