Kangning (Ken) Huang

Kangning (Ken) Huang is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at NYU Shanghai. He received his PhD degree from Yale University, School of the Environment in 2020. Prior to joining NYU, he was an Advanced Study Program Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. His research and teaching focus on the overarching question of: How does urbanization affect climate change? The urbanization-induced land cover changes affect the regional climate by altering the surface hydrometeorological processes, and the urbanization-induced life-style changes affect the global climate by increasing fossil energy consumption. However, the cross-scale impacts of urbanization on climate change are not constant; instead, these impacts depend on where and how we will build cities of the future. By developing global-scale urbanization scenarios, his research explores a broad range of possible urban climate futures and the interventions needed to achieve the more sustainable ones. His research has been funded by NASA (via an NESSF graduate fellowship), NSF (via an NCAR postdoc fellowship), and other sponsors. Dr. Huang is a recepient of the 2025–2026 NYU Shanghai Teaching Excellence Award.

Select Publications

• Kangning Huang & Mingzhen Lu. "Nested economies of scale in global city mass." Nature Cities (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-026-00532-x

• Xucai Zhang, Xiaobing Wei, Xiaoping Liu, Honghong Wei, Yue Zheng, Hongkai Gu, Yangzi Che, Yeran Sun, Ming Luo, Weilin Liao, Haosheng Huang, and Kangning Huang. "Toward cooler cities by larger homogeneous functional clusters." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 123(43): e2617717123 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2617717123

• Yujie Sun, Xuyan Gao, Jiayong Liang, Kangning Huang. “Unveiling the causal link between informal settlement demolition and urban cooling.” npj Environmental Social Sciences (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44432-026-00009-1

• Jiayong Liang, Imaan Hilaly, Xuyan Gao, ChengHe Guan, Ying Li, Kangning Huang. “Height-aware and protection-informed flood assessment shifts global urban risk distribution.” Scientific Reports (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-70981-w

• Kangning Huang, ChengHe Guan, Brian Stone Jr., Jiayong Liang. “Declining urban density attenuates rising population exposure to surface heat extremes.” Scientific Reports 15, 13860 (2025).
   

Education

• PhD, School of the Environment
  Yale University, 2020
• MS, School of Geography and Planning
  Sun Yat-Sen University, 2014
• BS, School of Geography and Planning
  Sun Yat-Sen University, 2011