Collegium Helveticum
Switzerland
fellow
Somayeh Dodge
2023-2024
Home institution
University of California, Santa Barbara, US
Country of origin (home institution)
United States
Discipline(s)
Geography; Social Sciences
Theme(s)
Aging; Health; Other
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Somayeh Dodge is a geographer and serves as an associate professor of spatial data science in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara (US). Her work focuses on developing geographic data analytics, knowledge discovery, modeling, and visualization techniques for interdisciplinary research on movement in human and ecological systems. Her research explores how movement processes are influenced by the behavior of individuals, their social interactions, and their environment across different application domains such as movement ecology and human mobility.
Somayeh received her PhD in Geography from the University of Zurich in 2011, with a specialization in geographic information science. She is a recipient of the 2021 NSF CAREER award and the 2022 Emerging Scholar Award from the Spatial Analysis and Modeling Specialty Group of the American Associations of Geographers.
Research Project
Understanding Well-Being through Movement and Interaction
This project uses movement as a marker to study daily activities of community-dwelling older adults. Using a high-resolution and multi-dimensional data set that includes movement tracking as well as psychological and behavioral observations, the project examines associations between daily activities, health, and well-being at the individual level.
This multidisciplinary project is carried out in collaboration with the UZH Geography Department, UZH Healthy Longevity Center (HLC), and the URPP Dynamics of Healthy Aging (DynAge). The goal is to develop and test data-driven computational methods to analyze and contextualize individuals’ activity patterns and social interactions through movement. The developed methods can contribute to the tracing of critical encounters and exposures via human social and daily activities and an understanding of how active mobility intersects with human health and well-being.
Research Interests:
well-being; aging; geography; activity patterns