Vipin Kumar delivers the eighth annual Borchert Lecture as part of the UMN Spatial Forum

Dr. Vipin Kumar, William Norris Professor and Head of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota, gave the eighth annual Borchert Lecture, which honors the late John Borchert, University of Minnesota Regents Professor in Geography and member of the U.S. National Academy of Science. David Borchert, one of Dr. Borchert's sons, attended the event named in honor of his father. This annual lecture features notable speakers in the area of geographic information science and this year was part of the campus-wide Spatial Forum and GIS Day celebration. Dr. Kumar's current research interests include data mining, high-performance computing, and their applications in Climate/Ecosystems and Biomedical domains. He is the Lead PI of a 5-year, $10 Million project, "Understanding Climate Change - A Data Driven Approach", funded by the NSF's Expeditions in Computing program that is aimed at pushing the boundaries of computer science research. He has authored over 300 research articles, and co-edited or coauthored 10 books including the widely used text book "Introduction to Parallel Computing", and "Introduction to Data Mining" both published by Addison-Wesley. Dr. Kumar's presentation, Understanding Global Change: Opportunities and Challenges for Data Driven Research, was well-attended and many excellent questions were asked by the audience. The climate and earth sciences have recently undergone a rapid transformation from a data-poor to a data-rich environment. In particular, climate and ecosystem related observations from remote sensors on satellites, as well as outputs of climate or earth system models from large-scale computational platforms, provide terabytes of temporal, spatial and spatio-temporal data. These information-rich datasets offer huge potential for monitoring, understanding, and predicting the behavior of the Earth's ecosystem and for advancing the science of global change. This talk highlighted some of the challenges in analyzing such data sets and reported on early research results.

2014 Student Recognition

Congratulations to the MGIS Solar Dream Team, Ben Gosack, Chris Martin, Molly McDonald, Michael Moore, Stephen Palka, Devon Piernot, Andy Walz, and faculty adviser, Len Kne, who won first place in ESRI's Climate Resilience App Challenge 2014 including a $10,000 prize. Six members of the team traveled to the ESRI User Conference in July to accept their award during the opening session of the conference. The group has been recognized widely for this achievement including the Star Tribune, the Wisconsin State Cartographer's Office and Government Technology magazine.

Also join me in congratulating several MGIS students who received awards or completed their degrees thus far in 2014. Kathryn Purdham and Kyle Wikstrom are the recipients of 2014 ESRI User Conference Student Assistantships. These awards are very competitive and securing one is a high achievement. Each year a UMN student is recognized as the Outstanding Student of the Year for our local ESRI Development Center. The 2014 recipient is Yiqun (Ian) Xie.

Taylor Long, MGIS program, is the graduate winner of the 2014 UMN Minnesota GIS/LIS Student Scholar Award for his GIS project, eBird Participation Mapping. Rebecca Barney, B.A. in Geography, is the undergraduate winner of the same award for her project, Creating Rebecca's Interactive Adventure Map. Both students did an outstanding job representing the University of Minnesota in the graduate and undergraduate student paper sessions at the Fall 2014 Minnesota GIS/LIS Annual Conference in early October. Taylor was awarded second place in the graduate paper competition.

Finally, congratulations to our recent 2014 graduates! For a detailed listing, visit the MGIS graduates page.

GISSO recognized at the 2013 Tony Diggs Awards Ceremony

The GIS Student Organization (GISSO) was nominated for the 2013 Tony Diggs Excellence Awards in the category of Outstanding Graduate or Professional Student Group of the Year. While the group did not win the top award in this category, they were recognized for their service to the University along with a field of an impressive student organizations. GISSO has sponsored and organized many GIS events and outreach efforts, their most prominent being the annual GIS Networking and Career Fair. Under the leadership of President Taylor Long and Vice President Molly McDonald this student group has provided outstanding service to the community and the University along with the support of its other dedicated officers and membership. To learn more about this outstanding student organization including becoming a member, visit the GISSO web site.

Taylor Long captures two awards in U-Spatial Mapping Prize Competition

Taylor Long won two awards in the U-Spatial Mapping Prize Competition; prizes were made possible by a generous gift from U of M alumnus Jack Dangermond, founder and president of Esri. Taylor was awarded the "Best Cartography" prize, a $500 cash award, for his map, Madison Fork and Environs; he also won "Best Overall Submissions" for his maps, Madison Fork and Environs and e-Bird Participation in 2012, for which he was awarded an all-expense paid trip to the Esri GeoDesign Summit.

Congratulations to 2014 U-Spatial Poster Competition Winners!

Congratulations to the winners of the U-Spatial Poster Competition held at the 2014 GIS Networking and Career Fair! Tyler Kaebisch won first place for his poster LiDAR Derived Lake Boundaries. Taylor Long captured second place for eBird Participation in 2012: Citizen Science Aides Avian Research, while Ben Gosack took third place for Urban Tree Assessment for the University of Minnesota: Capturing Urban Tree Measurements from LiDAR Data. Honorable mention to MGIS students, Corey Betchwars, Teresa Lewandowski, Yiwen Li, and Joseph Mueller for their outstanding entries.

2014 MGIS Graduate Job Hires and Changes

Congratulations to our recent graduates and others who have changed jobs in 2014 as they establish and maintain successful careers in the GIS profession!

Gayatri Alapati (2013) currently works for General Electric Oil and Gas as a GIS programming consultant in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Patrick Baldwin (2012) is now a GIS Specialist at Flat Rock Geographics in St. Paul, MN. This GIS consulting company was founded by two MGIS grads, Blaine Hackett (2001) and Paul Wickman (2007).

Justin Bakken (2011) has been promoted to GIS Specialist at Natural Resource Group, LLC.

Corey Betchwars (2014) has been hired as a Research/GIS Analyst for the City of St. Paul's Planning and Economic Development Office.

Tom Chambers (2012) has been hired as a GIS Specialist with Goodhue County in Minnesota.

Kyle Chester (2010) has changed positions at Xcel Energy and is now a Solutions Consultant.

Tony Drollinger (2010) has the new title of Commuter Programs Specialist at Metro Transit in the Twin Cities.

Stephen Dunning (2004) has been promoted to Director of Strategy and Business Development at the Chronic Disease Research Group of the Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation.

Josh Dunsmoor (2013) has taken a new position as a GIS Analyst with Steel Shire Design in Minnesota.

Keith Erickson (2012) is now a Geospatial Software Engineer with Digital Globe in Golden, Colorado.

Kim Gorman (2008) has added Program Manager to her job title of Senior Project Manager/GIS Specialist at Tetra Tech.

Ben Gosack (2014) is a GIS Analyst with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Jenny Immich (2010) completed her doctoral degree in Anthropology and is now a GIS Teaching Fellow at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Chacko Jacob (2009) has been promoted to Vice President of Global Technology and Business at Farmers Edge in Calgary, Canada.

Tim Jacobson (2010) is now a Network Engineer with Frontier Communications in Burnsville, Minnesota.

Kris Johnson (2013) and his family moved to Duluth, Minnesota where Kris works as a GIS Developer at North Point GIS.

Brad Johnston (2013) has been hired at Carver County as a GIS Specialist.

Tyler Kaebisch (2014) has been hired as the Senior Research Analysis Specialist (Remote sensing image analyst) for the Minnesota DNR's Division of Forestry in Grand Rapids.

John Koenigs (2011) is now a Help Desk Representative at Cityworks, Azteca Systems, Inc. in West Bend, Wisconsin.

Yiwen Li (2014) works as a Community GIS Research Specialist at the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

Yuanyuan Luo (2014) is continuing to work as a Research Specialist for the Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota.

Fukhrudin Maalim (2014) is a Research Analyst at the National Centre for Food Protection and Defense in St. Paul, MN.

Chris Martin (2014) has been hired as a Solutions Engineer for ESRI Professional Services in Boston, Massachusetts.

Molly Martin (2011) has been hired as the GIS Principal with St. Louis County, Minnesota.

Matt McLees (2013) now works as a Senior GIS Analyst at Scott County in Minnesota.

Mike Mommsen (2013) works for Historical Information Gatherers as a researcher and developer in Hopkins, Minnesota.

Tony Monsour (2012) now works as a GIS Analyst for Scott County along with fellow MGIS graduate, Matt McLees.

Stephen Palka (2014) was hired as a GIS Analyst with Innovate!, Inc. and will work as a contractor to the USGS and EROS Data Center.

Greg Schulz (2010) is now a GIS Developer with Target Corporation in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Prakash Singh (2011) has transitioned to a new position with Blu Homes as a Full Stack Software Engineer in San Francisco, California.

Tom Swanson (2007) has moved from New York and is now the Deputy Geographic Information Officer for Architecture and Planning at the City of Philadelphia.

Zeb Thomas (2012) has been promoted to GIS Data Systems Coordinator at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Noel Peterson (2011) has been promoted to Associate Analyst at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

Jesse Reinhardt (2007) has been promoted to GIS Business Services Lead at the Hennepin County GIS Office.

Matt Taraldsen (2013) has been hired as a Severe Weather Research Associate at the National Weather Service Warning Decision Training Branch in Norman, Oklahoma.

Lucas Winzenburg (2013) has secured a position at the University of Minnesota working as the Education and Outreach Coordinator for the Polar Geospatial Center and U-Spatial.