My research area broadly covers spatial health and land use/cover change. In particular, I am interested in improving the understanding of the relationships between environmental factors and infectious disease risk and distribution. My recent research projects cover the following topics.

• Spatial Patterns of Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Infection and Risk.

The NTD that I have been focusing on is liver fluke infection through the consumption of raw fish dishes in the Mekong Region. Liver fluke is one of the foodborne parasites that infect millions of people in Southeast Asia. Although the life cycle of the parasite and people’s livelihood are closely related to water environments, research has not paid much attention to the influence of the changing landscape on human health. My work on this topic has called for attention to examining the interplay of land use, parasitic hosts, and human behavior to comprehend the risk of infection. The collaboration is mainly with Khon Kaen University, Thailand. 

Recent conference co-organized: Asian Neglected Tropical Disease Conference (NTDAsia 2025) , to integrate social science and biomedical science for disease prevention and control. 

Representative publications: 

Wang, Y-C., Law, A., Namsanor, J., Sithithaworn, P., and Khuntikeo, N. (2024) Linking parasite, people and places: The food networks of liver fluke infection. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 114(8):1781-1794.

Wang, Y-C., Namsanor, J., Law, A., and Sithithaworn, P. (2023) A socio-ecological framework for examining foodborne parasitic infection risk. Acta Tropica 244:106957.

Wang, Y-C., Law, A., Namsanor, J., and Sithithaworn, P. (2023) Examining ecosystem (dis-)services on liver fluke infection in rural Northeast Thailand. Infectious Diseases of Poverty 12:38.

Wang, Y-C., Grundy-Warr, C., Namsanor, J., Kenney-Lazar, M., Tang, C.J.Y., Goh, L.Y.W., Chong, Y.C., Sithithaworn, P. Ngonkum, S., and Khuntikeo, N. (2021) Masculinity and misinformation: Social dynamics of liver fluke infection risk in Thailand. Parasitology International 84:102382.

Ong, X., Wang, Y-C., Sithithaworn, P., Grundy-Warr, C., and Pitaksakulrat, P. (2016) Dam influences on liver fluke transmission: Fish infection and human fish consumption behavior. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 106(4):755-772.

• Health and Urban Environments - Assessing Spatiotemporal Vulnerability, Risk Perceptions of and Behaviours toward Infectious Diseases in Singapore
  
  

The main focus of this line of research is to assess the spatiotemporal vulnerability for more contagious infectious disease in the urban setting. We aim to develop a spatiotemporal integrated vulnerability model to characterize the variation of COVID-19 risk across space and time, incorporating social, built, platial and human movement features known to influence disease transmission. This improves upon prior work that is over-reliance on census-based measures as the main source of information, while neglecting the critical temporal dimension of human movement. The project collaborates with colleagues of Duke-NUS and of Social Cohesion Research, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University (NTU). 

Representative publications: 

Chin, W.C.B., Feng, C-C., Leong, C-H., Clapham, H.E., Pang J., and Wang, Y-C. (2024) The networked community of urban mobility during the pandemic. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 114(8):1704-1717.

Chin, W.C.B., Feng, C-C., Leong, C-H., Pang J., Clapham, H.E., Nara, A., Tsou, M-H., and Wang, Y-C. (2023) Integrating local and neighboring area influences into vulnerability modeling of infectious diseases in Singapore. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 121:103376.

Leong, C.H., Chin, B.W.C., Feng, C.-C. and Wang, Y-C. (2021). A socio-ecological perspective on COVID-19 spatiotemporal integrated vulnerability in Singapore. In: Shaw, S.L., Sui, D. (eds) Mapping COVID-19 in Space and Time, Human Dynamics in Smart Cities. Springer, Cham.

• Forest Restoration & Ecological Monitoring

I also have a broad interest in applying GIS and remote sensing techniques in analyzing the spatial and temporal patterns of the landscape. Expanding from my earlier work on historical vegetation reconstruction and land use/cover mapping, I am collaborating on the project "Forest Restoration Digital Companion (FRDC): A Social-Ecological-Technical Systems Approach". Funded by the Temasek Foundation, the project involves colleagues from NUS Biological Sciences, NTU School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the Asian School of the Environment of NTU, and NParks. We integrate forest ecology, remote sensing, machine learning and spatial data science to develop models and digital tools to assist forest restoration work. The project aims to improve our understanding of forest regeneration in the tropics and the efficacy of restoration approaches in achieving carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation targets. 

Related publications:

Xu, D. and Wang, Y-C. (2025). GIEHP: A global, AI-powdered platform for near real-time ecological intelligence. Environmental Science and Ecotechnology 28:100634.

Students interested in working on their theses related to the above projects, or broadly on NTD and health-environment, please feel free to contact me.