Media Coverage
Through various media outlets, we are able to translate complex scientific findings into accessible stories. These stories raise spatial awareness and drive health action for socially vulnerable communities.
Streetblog
Study: Boring roads end up with more injuries for people outside cars
August 21, 2025
Researchers at the University of Connecticut recently analyzed the emotional reactions of more than 81,000 volunteers to a trove of Google Street View images from 56 cities around the world — and found that certain recurring perceptions correlated tightly with how many car crashes involving vulnerable road users actually happened where those photos were taken.
UConn Today
When it comes to obesity-related cancers, where you shop for food matters
April 2, 2025
A team of researchers developed a novel tool to help understand consumer behavior at the county level, and to study the relationship between where people shop for their food and the risk of obesity-related cancers. Their findings are published in BMC Medicine.
UConn Today
Enriching mentorship to ensure success in Grad School
January 30, 2025
The Graduate School at UConn is committed to providing this support, and to help meet these goals, they created the Network for Enriched Mentorship, or NEM. Now in its second year of operation, the current cohort includes more than 70 faculty and staff members paired with over 85 students. Dr. Peter Chen, Faculty Affiliate of the Graduate School and Director of the NEM program, has created a safe and supportive space for graduate students through individualized mentorship.
Nature
People go the extra mile for food
November 21, 2023
GPS data reveal that people travel far from home to buy food in the United States, challenging ideas about how access to food relates to unhealthy eating habits. Using GPS tracking data, Xu et al. calculated the percentage of food-buying visits that people from a given area made to retailers selling healthy food. They found that this measure was a better predictor of rates of obesity, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure than is the percentage of such retailers in the local area.
UConn Today
Nationwide study redefines how food environment impacts cardiometabolic diseases
November 20, 2023
A collaboration led by researchers from the University of Connecticut has incorporated a vital component they think is largely missing from current food environment studies: namely, human mobility.
Their findings are published in Nature Communications.
UConn Today
UConn researcher develops town-level model for COVID-19 in Connecticut
January 26, 2022
UConn professor of geography Peter Chen has published a study in the International Journal of Geographical Information Science outlining a comprehensive predictive model for COVID-19 in every Connecticut town based on travel behaviors.
This model, named the MSEIR model, is a major contribution to the field, as it is the first COVID-19 model to focus on the town, rather than the state or national level.
