Dr. Chi-Ren Shyu

Dr. Chi-Ren Shyu is the founding director of University of Missouri Institute for Data Science and Informatics (MU IDSI) where 160 graduate students enrolling in the Informatics PhD program and Data Science & Analytics MS degree program with one of the emphasis areas in geospatial informatics.  Dr. Shyu has extensive experience leading federally funded training programs as a PI (US Department of Education GAANN, NIH T32, and NSF CyberCorps Scholarship for Service) and administrative experience in building and executing interdisciplinary training and research programs at MU through existing communication channels with university administrators, deans, and chairs. He was a PI of a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) University Research Initiatives Award and delivered remote sensing search engines with top three rankings in both maturity and innovation categories from the NGA through competitions with defense industry and academic institutions. He served as an advisory board member for Image Information Mining initiative of European Space Agency (ESA) in Germany and currently serving as a Research Council Member of the Taylor Geospatial Institute in the greater St. Louis area, as well as MU’s faculty representative for the Southeastern Conference (SEC) AI Curriculum Consortium.  His recent geospatial data science and AI research focuses on health equity, biosecurity, pandemic/disaster resilience, and smart climate. Dr. Shyu is an elected fellow of American Medical Informatics Association with more than 120 journal publications. An NSF CAREER awardee receiving numerous teaching/mentoring awards, UM System President’s Leadership award, MU Faculty-Alumni Award, and publishing more than 120 journal articles, he has the scientific, teaching, mentoring, and administration expertise to support this inter-campus project.