Mengya Xu

Mengya Xu, Ph.D., is an Instructor (Teaching) of Spatial Sciences with the USC Spatial Sciences Institute.

Xu is a health geographer and spatial data scientist whose research explores how the places where people live, travel, and spend their daily lives shape health and well-being. She is particularly interested in food environments, green spaces, public transit, neighborhood social conditions, and human mobility, with a broader goal of understanding how cities can be designed to support healthier and more equitable lives.

Her work brings together GIScience, spatial epidemiology, mobility analytics, and GeoAI to study the connections between people, place, and health across multiple spatial scales. She works with large-scale geospatial and population data, including Medicare claims, longitudinal cohort data, mobility and transportation data, and street-view imagery to investigate environmental exposures, chronic disease, cognitive aging, and spatial inequalities in health.

Her teaching similarly sits at the intersection of spatial thinking, computation, and real-world problem-solving. She is interested in teaching GIS programming, spatial data science, and emerging GeoAI methods, with an emphasis on helping students use geospatial tools to understand contemporary urban, environmental, and public health challenges.

Prior to joining the Spatial Sciences Institute as teaching faculty, Xu was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She received her Ph.D. in Population, Health and Place from USC, where her doctoral research examined food access, transportation, and mobility in Los Angeles County. Her work has been recognized through support from Women in GIS & Esri, including a 2026 grant for research and innovation in GIS and geospatial science.

Ph.D., Population, Health and Place, University of Southern California, 2024
M.S., Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, Wuhan University, 2019
B.S., Geographic Information Systems, Minor in Finance, Wuhan University, 2016

Xu, M., Livings, M. S., de la Haye, K., & Wilson, J. P. (2026). Extending the space–time prism for multimodal, household-level accessibility modeling: A GIS-based framework applied to food access in Los Angeles, CA. Applied Geography, 192, 104054.

Xu, M., de la Haye, K., MacDonald, B., & Wilson, J. P. (2026). Rethinking food access at the household level under the 15-minute city framework. Cities, 170, 106657.

Xu, M., Wilson, J. P., Bruine de Bruin, W., Lerner, L., Horn, L. A., Livings, M. S., & de la Haye, K. (2024). New insights into grocery store visits among East Los Angeles residents. Health & Place, 87, 103220.

Xu, M., Xin, J., Su, S., Weng, M., & Cai, Z. (2017). Social inequalities of park accessibility in Shenzhen, China: The role of park quality, transport modes, and hierarchical socioeconomic characteristics. Journal of Transport Geography, 62, 38–50.

de la Haye, K., Wilson, J.P., Bruine de Bruin, W., Xu, M., Ramirez, C., Lerner, L., Livings, M.S., Wasim, N., Perez, M., Fanning, J., Wald, R., & Babboni, M. (2023). Improving Healthy Food Access in Four Eastside Los Angeles Neighborhoods. Dornsife Public Exchange, University of Southern California. (Policy Report)