Mandela Gadri, a member of the HEROP Lab, is the recipient of the Messina-Stanley Graduate Scholarship in Medical and Environmental Geography for the 2025–2026 academic year.

Dr. Kolak notes that Mandela “consistently brings together technical skill, conceptual clarity, and practical relevance in ways that are increasingly necessary for addressing uneven access to transportation and opportunity across communities.”

Ph.D. candidate Mandela Gadri has a B.S. in urban planning from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, and an M.S. in community and regional planning from Iowa State University. He also has a certificate in GIS and worked as a planner with the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa prior to joining UIUC.

This departmental award is endowed by Dianne Messina Stanley (nee Massock). Dianne was born and raised in Champaign and earned an A.B. from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and an M.S. from the College of Media at Illinois. Her daughter Jane Messina also attended Illinois, where she earned a Master’s degree in geography from our department. Jane’s work as a medical geographer and Dianne’s own passion for environmental issues prompted her to designate this award for graduate students in these fields of study.

Check out the following publications by Mandela:

• Chong, B., Baccile, R., Kapadia, A., Gadri, M., Sandella, R., Goffinet, A., … & Kupfer, S. S. (2024). Early-stage Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Diagnosis is Inversely Associated with Travel Distance and Travel Time. Pancreas, 10-1097.
• Iddrisu, Z., Abdulai, A. S. J., Kefayat, E., & Gadri, M. (2025). Local Government Proliferation and Fiscal Efficiency: Evidence From Ghana. Growth and Change, 56(4), e70058.

He also has forthcoming book chapter on “Beyond the Car: Spatiotemporal Insights on Integrated Mobility in Transportation and Healthcare Access” in Spatiotemporal Analytics of Health and Mobility: AI, Big Data, and Social Sensing for Urban Well-being by Springer.

Mandela is primarily advised by Professor Julie Cidell, the Chair of the Department of Geography & GIScience at UIUC.

The lab is grateful to all the support from Mandela since we first moved to UIUC in 2022. From co-leading the inaugural GGIS exhibit at the annual Engineering Open House to collaborating on multiple projects over the years, Gadri’s influence on the lab and intellectual community in Urbana will be long-lasting.