Rate My Professor Zhiying Li

Zhiying Li is an assistant professor in the Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington, a position she has held since August 2023. Prior to this, she was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Geography at Dartmouth College from September 2021 to July 2023. Li earned her Ph.D. in Geography from The Ohio State University in 2021, M.S. in Physical Geography from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China in 2017, and B.S. in Agriculture in Soil and Water Conservation from Northwest A&F University in Yangling, Shaanxi, China in 2014. As a broadly trained physical geographer with a specialization in hydroclimatology, her research focuses on fundamental and applied questions regarding how climate variability and human intervention alter the water cycle. This includes hydroclimatic extremes such as droughts, extreme precipitation, and climate whiplash, as well as water availability. Her approaches encompass process-based hydrologic models, spatiotemporal statistical modeling, machine learning, big data analytics, GIS, and remote sensing to inform risk management, climate adaptation, and sustainable development.

Li has received prestigious recognitions, including the Fischer Faculty Fellowship at the O'Neill School in 2026 to support her work on sustainable urban development and climate resilience, and the American Association of Geographers Climate Specialty Group John Russell Mather Paper of the Year Award in 2025 for her lead-authored paper 'Emergent Trends Complicate the Interpretation of the United States Drought Monitor' published in AGU Advances in 2024. Other honors include the AAG Elevate the Discipline Climate Change & Society Cohort in 2023 and the Story Exchange Our Women in Science Incentive Prize in 2022. She has secured principal investigator grants from the USGS for projects on hydrologic intensification and drought-flood alternations. Key publications feature 'Developing Impacts-Based Drought Thresholds for Ohio' (Journal of Hydrometeorology, 2023), 'Projection of Streamflow Change Using a Time-Varying Budyko Framework in the Contiguous United States' (Water Resources Research, 2022), 'Investigating Spatial Heterogeneity of the Controls of Surface Water Balance in the Contiguous United States' (Journal of Hydrology, 2021), and 'Identifying the Dominant Drivers of Hydrological Change in the Contiguous United States' (Water Resources Research, 2021). Li leads the Hydroclimatology Group, delivers invited lectures at universities, chairs conference sessions, and serves in editorial roles such as Associate Deputy Editor at Climatic Change.