He received his Ph.D. from the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Before joining UNT, M.Sc. from the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications (IRSA), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and B.Sc. from Peking University, China. He was a Staff Associate/GIS Specialist at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University, and an instructor for the Geospatial Technologies Certificate Program at the School of Continuing Education, Columbia University. He also worked as a Senior GIS Analyst/Programmer at Titan Corporation in California (USA) and Okinawa (Japan).