Celebrating Faculty and Staff Achievements 2018–2019

Another academic year has flown by at the Center for Geospatial Analytics, and it was packed with impressive work by our exemplary faculty and staff. Below is a sampling of the achievements of the center’s faculty fellows, research associates, staff and postdoctoral scholars since last May. Congratulations to all for your accomplishments!

Awards

• Faculty Fellow Josh Gray and postdoctoral scholars Anna Petrasova and Vaclav Petras were winners in the 2018 NC State Envisioning Research contest.
• A Center for Geospatial Analytics team led by faculty fellow Perver Baran (and including research associate Makiko Shukunobe and Ph.D. student Reza Amindarbari) and a team from the City of Raleigh were honored with an Esri Special Achievement in GIS award for their collaborative, cutting-edge development of InVision Raleigh.
• Postdoctoral scholar Vaclav Petras received funding to attend the Google Summer of Code 2018 Mentor Summit.
• Associate Director of Professional Education Eric Money led a team (including faculty fellows Aaron Hipp and Perver Baran) to secure a grant from the University Global Partnership Network (UGPN) Research Collaboration Fund on a project called “Bringing environmental quality and new life to city centres” with University of São Paulo.
• Center teaching assistant professor Stacy Supak was named one of five DELTA Faculty Fellows across NC State University.
• Faculty Fellows Karl Wegmann and Del Bohnenstiehl won an Exploratory DELTA grant: “Exploration of a Location-Based Learning Platform for Higher Education.”
• Center Associate Director of Geovisualization Helena Mitasova received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Geomorphometry Society.
• Faculty Fellow Natalie Nelson was a winner of the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Three Minute Thesis Competition.
• Postdoctoral scholar Georgina Sanchez received a NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Award to attend Annual Meeting for the US-International Association of Landscape Ecology.
• Postdoctoral scholar Chris Jones received a Google Cloud Platform research grant for hosting and running on the web the PoPS (Pest or Pathogen Spread) model he and his team are developing.
• Faculty Fellow Emily Berglund won an Outstanding Graduate Faculty Mentor Award at the NC State Graduate Student Research Symposium.
• Faculty Fellow Gustavo Machado was awarded the College of Veterinary Medicine’s global health program’s first seed grant.
• Business Services Coordinator Mary Hicks was the 2019 SHRA winner of the CNR Award for Excellence in recognition for her exceptional customer service. Mary also won the CNR Pride of the Wolfpack Award for 2019.
• University Program Associate Rachel Kasten was recognized as a first-year graduate of NC State’s Equal Opportunity Institute.
• Faculty Fellow Bethany Cutts was promoted to associate professor with tenure in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, and Faculty Fellow Laura Tateosian was promoted to associate teaching professor at the Center for Geospatial Analytics.

Popular Press / Speaking Engagements

• Faculty Fellow Sandra Yuter was interviewed on the Science Podcast.
• Faculty Fellow Dan Obenour was interviewed on Public Radio East.
• Faculty Fellow Stacy Nelson was interviewed on the Leadership Nature podcast.
• Faculty Fellow Bethany Cutts gave a Daily Planet lunchtime talk at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.
• Faculty Fellow Ryan Emanuel was interviewed on WUNC State of Things.
• Faculty Fellows Andy Fox and David Hill published an Opinion piece in the New York Times.
• Faculty Fellow Aaron Hipp was featured on the NRPA Podcast.
• Associate Director of Professional Education Eric Money was a speaker at GIS Day at Duke University.
• Associate Director of Geovisualization Helena Mitasova was featured in an article about dune migration in the News & Observer and Charlotte Observer.
• Faculty Fellow Paul Byrne was interviewed by WBTW News 13 and many other news outlets about planetary discoveries. He also published an article in The Conversation, which was picked up by several news outlets.
• Postdoctoral scholar Vaclav Petras was invited to serve as a panelist at the American Association of Geographers annual meeting on “Teaching Programming for GIS and Geography.”
• Postdoctoral scholar Kunwar Singh delivered a Data & Visualization workshop through NC State University Libraries: “Ecohydrological modeling for land and climate change studies.”
• Faculty Fellow Natalie Nelson was featured in an article in Coastal Review Online.
• Postdoctoral scholar Lindsey Smart and Faculty Fellow Jelena Vukomanovic organized a special symposium at the US-International Association of Landscape Ecology Annual Meeting: “Participatory Research in Land Change Science.”
• Postdoctoral scholars Kunwar Singh and Lindsey Smart and Director Ross Meentemeyer organized a special symposium at the US-International Association of Landscape Ecology Annual Meeting: “Multi-sensor Data Integration for Time Series Analysis of Land-change and Natural Resources.”
• Research Associate Justin Shedd gave a guest talk about GIS at Wakefield Middle School in Raleigh.
• Faculty Fellow Ryan Emanuel was featured in a 10-minute documentary by Science Friday about ghost forests; the video also features work by postdoctoral scholar Lindsey Smart.