Celebrating Student Achievements 2018–2019

With another academic year drawn to a close, there is a lot to celebrate at the Center for Geospatial Analytics! Below is a sampling of the outstanding work accomplished by the center’s talented and energetic students since last May.

Doctoral Students

• Center doctoral students published five peer-reviewed articles and presented over 20 papers and posters at professional conferences. Alongside center postdoctoral scholars, they also participated in multiple NC State research symposia, including CNR’s Graduate Research Symposium, CNR’s Multilingual Research Symposium, the university-wide Latin American Research Symposium, and the university-wide Graduate Research Symposium. Videos of their presentations at the 2019 NC GIS Conference are available to view on YouTube.
• Zekun Lin (Geospatial Analytics Ph.D. student) received a Global Change Graduate Fellowship from the Southeast Climate Center for 2018-2019.
• Megan Coffer (Geospatial Analytics Ph.D. student) placed third in the Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources category at the university-wide Graduate Research Symposium. Megan was also selected to participate in the 2019 AAG-UCGIS Summer School.
• Devon Gaydos (Forestry and Environmental Resources Ph.D. student) received a NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Award to attend the Annual Meeting for the US-International Association of Landscape Ecology; she also received a scholarship to attend the 9th International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software.
• Umesh Gupta (Geospatial Analytics Ph.D. student) and his team won the Civic Camp Hackathon at NC Open Pass 2018 and the NC Open Pass DataPalooza.
• Jason Matney (Geospatial Analytics Ph.D. student) was named NC State’s Esri Development Center 2019 Student of the Year.
• Nick Kruskamp (Geospatial Analytics Ph.D. student) was a speaker at GIS Day at Duke University.
• Kellyn Montgomery (Geospatial Analytics Ph.D. student) won the G. Herbert Stout Student Award to represent NC State at the NC GIS Conference.
• Our first cohort of Geospatial Analytics Ph.D. students presented class projects at Hunt Library from their core course “Geospatial Computation and Simulation” taught by Helena Mitasova.
• Umesh Gupta (Geospatial Analytics Ph.D. student) and Chris Jones (center research associate) were selected to participate in the OPEN Incubator pilot program.

Professional Master’s in Geospatial Information Science & Technology (MGIST) Students

• Sabina Bastias completed a graduate internship over Summer 2018 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
• Elizabeth Robinson volunteered for three missions over Summer 2018 with GISCorps.
• Joshua Turner completed an internship over Summer 2018 with the NASA DEVELOP program at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. He also won the 2018 USGIF Ken Miller Scholarship for Advanced Remote Sensing Applications and was featured in Trajectory Magazine.
• Eli Heetderks delivered a Peer Scholars workshop through NC State University Libraries: “Build and Upgrade Your Own PC.”
• Adam Blythe gave a guest talk about GIS at Wakefield Middle School in Raleigh.
• Sixteen graduating MGIST students completed unique capstone service-learning projects that engaged community partners in problem-solving with GIS.

Geospatial Graduate Student Organization (GGSO):

The GGSO is a university-recognized community that supports all graduate students affiliated with the center, both on-campus and online (M.S., Ph.D., MGIST and Graduate Certificate in GIS). Led by students for students, the GGSO advances networking in the geospatial community, provides a platform for research and offers social events.

This academic year, the GGSO organized a team-building escape room adventure and high ropes course, relaxation events to support students’ well-being, the center-wide Spring Equinox Party and the Geospatial Socials following each Geospatial Forum. To support professional and academic development, the GGSO also launched a Lunch-and-Learn series, which this year focused on visual design and conference presentations. The GGSO’s Geospatial Forum Committee also collected and reviewed nominations for Geospatial Forum speakers and helped coordinate a special Doctoral Student Edition of the forum, at which four students presented their work.