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Professor Mei-Po Kwan from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)’s Department of Geography and Resource Management, who is also Director of the Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, has received the James R. Anderson Medal of Honor in Applied Geography for her multidisciplinary, paradigm-shifting contributions to applied geography. She is the first Chinese and the third female scholar to receive the highest honour bestowed by the Applied Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) over its 39-year history.

The AAG acclaimed Professor Kwan for her innovative thinking in analytical approaches and for substantive relevance, as well as for her notable success in linking geography with diverse disciplines in the social, health and transport sciences. AAG also praised her for demonstrating a significant and sustained contribution to applied geography, which made her the most deserving recipient of the honour.

Professor Kwan regards receiving the award as a great honour, and said, “I am most grateful to the AAG for the recognition of my research work, and it is an honour to be ranked among such an outstanding group of applied geographers. I look forward to contributing to innovative research in geography to benefit society and improve people’s livelihoods.”

Professor Kwan’s research interests include environmental health, human mobility, urban and social issues in cities, and geographic information science. She specialises in applying advanced geospatial technologies to collect real-time individual-level data in environmental health research, which helps measure how much the environment influences people’s health. Her recent projects examine the health impacts on individuals of various environmental factors, including noise, air pollution and green space; the protection of geoprivacy via the development of a Geospatial Virtual Data Enclave (GVDE); and the space-time patterns of high-risk locations for COVID-19.

Professor Kwan is a Fellow of the United Kingdom Academy of Social Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Royal Geographical Society and the American Association of Geographers. She has received the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) Research Award, as well as numerous outstanding academic achievement awards from the American Association of Geographers, including the Distinguished Scholarship Honours, the Wilbanks Prize for Transformational Research in Geography and the Stanley Brunn Award for Creativity in Geography.

About the James R. Anderson Medal of Honor in Applied Geography

Established in 1983, the medal is the highest honour bestowed by the AAG Applied Geography Specialty Group and is awarded by the group’s board of directors in recognition of individuals or groups’ highly distinguished service to the profession of geography. Previous recipients include several founding figures of modern geography, including Brian Berry, William Garrison and David Huff, as well as highly distinguished applied geographers, such as Roger Tomlinson, Jack Dangermond and Thomas Wilbanks.