Dr. Lan is a human geographer with backgrounds in GIS, spatial statistics, crime science, public health, and big data mining. He is particularly intrigued by the possibility of using interdisciplinary theories and methods to solve real-world problems. He believes that researchers shall actively adopt new data sources and new data-driven methods, while the research shall be guided and closely tied to established theories.

Dr. Lan is the director of the Spatial Social Science Research Lab at UToledo. His publications are mainly focusing on applications of spatial analysis on spatial-temporal crime patterns, advancements in criminology theories, and the substance abuse epidemic. His current research interests are:

1. Spatial-temporal analysis and its applications to crime, public health, and human sustainability
2. Data mining, natural language processing (NLP), and their applications on social media big data
3. Substance abuse epidemic and drug problem

• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=I6XAgVEAAAAJ&hl
• ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4528-9544
• ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Minxuan_Lan
• Web of Science: https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/1957117