Nina Lam, Ph.D.

Professor Nina Lam obtained her bachelor degree in Geography from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1975, and her master and doctoral degrees in Geography from the University of Western Ontario in Canada in 1977 and 1980 respectively.

She was an assistant professor at The Ohio State University from 1980-1985. In 1985, Professor Lam joined Louisiana State University and is currently a Full Professor as well as the R. J. Russell Distinguished Professor of Geography. During 1994-97, Professor Lam was also Adjunct Professor of LSU’s Department of Epidemiology and Community Health. From 1999-2001, Professor Lam was selected as the Program Director of the Geography and Regional Science Program at the National Science Foundation.

Professor Lam’s research interests are in remote sensing, geographic information science, cartography, spatial analysis, and medical geography. She has published in various journals and received research funding for topics such as spatial interpolation, cancer mortality studies in China, fractals and scale, AIDS in America, land cover change detection via remote sensing, and uncertainties in environmental health studies.

Professor Lam’s research has centered on the methodological aspect of geographic information science and on the spatial analysis of medical phenomena. Her research goal has been on advancing spatial analytical methods while applying them to analyze significant societal problems. In 1983, she received the best paper award (the Andrew McNally Award) for her article titled “Spatial interpolation methods: a review”, which was published in the journal The American Cartographer. Her edited book “Fractals in Geography”, published in 1993 by Prentice-Hall, has recently been reprinted by the Blackburn Press (2003), a time lapse of 10 years.

Dr. Lam’s research on the AIDS epidemic has been featured in various newspapers and magazines in the mid-1990s. Her recent research interests are in change detection using textural and spatial methods and data mining of medical, social, and economic phenomena. With support from NASA, Professor Lam and her collaborators developed the software called ICAMS (Image Characterization And Modeling System) in early 1990s.

Among other publications, Professor Lam is currently completing a coauthored book titled “Geospatial Methods for Remote Sensing and GIS” to be published by John Wiley & Sons.

Professor Lam teaches Environmental Remote Sensing, GIS, Advanced GIS Seminar, and Quantitative Methods for Geographical Analysis Seminar at LSU. She has been the major professor of 9 Ph.D.s and 16 MS graduates. She is currently major professor of 8 Ph.D. and 3 Master students.