Professor Shen Tianyan is currently a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Government, Peking University. He also serves as the Deputy Director of the Academic Committee, Vice President of the Capital Development Institute, Executive Director of the Urban Governance Research Institute, Executive Deputy Director of the China Regional Economic Research Center, and a dual-appointed professor at the Peking University Center for Science and Engineering Computing and the Peking University Ocean Research Institute. He holds various social positions, including being a member of the Expert Committee on Smart Cities of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China and a member of the Expert Advisory Committee on Land and Resources Informatization of the Ministry of Natural Resources.
Professor Shen was the first to propose a systematic theory of geographic spatial metadata and a distributed geographic data management model based on spatial metadata in China. He also early on elaborated on knowledge-based regional development theories, pointing out that cumulative regional learning (including institutional learning, skill learning, and location learning) is an important mechanism for endogenous regional development. He has published over 70 academic papers, including 3 papers indexed in SSCI, 7 papers indexed in Inspec, and 12 papers indexed in EI. He has also authored four books, including "Spatial Econometrics" ,and translated four books, including "Location and Spatial Economics: General Theory of Location".
