Dr. Isabel Cruz research areas include databases, geographic information systems, semantic web, information visualization, and security. Her current topics of research include information extraction and matching, big data (e.g., for geographical and biomedical information), visual analytics, context-aware role-based access control, data linking for urban resilience and sustainability, and crowdsourcing. With her students, Dr. Cruz has developed GIVA, an award-winning framework for the integration of spatial and temporal data. Her work in collaboration with Dr. Ning Ai for Great Cities Institute will build upon and expand her work on GIVA.
In “Feasibility & Efficiency Analysis of Neighborhood-Based Sustainable Food Waste Management” Professors Ai and Cruz will compare data from previous food waste studies conducted at UIC and across the Chicago metropolitan region, integrating state-of-art knowledge from the distinct fields of urban planning and computer science. Their comparison will include a consideration of differences in the methodologies of these studies in order to further refine models and parameters for future studies.
