Purdue GIS Day

The 9th Annual GIS Day Conference at Purdue was held at the Stewart Center on November 9, 2017. More than 280 students, faculty and staff members attended from various departments and offices on campus, as well as local agencies. Given the increasing number of attendees in the previous year, the 2017 GIS Day Conference was held in two rooms. STEW 206 was used for the keynote address, presentations and lightning talks, while STEW 214 was dedicated to the display tables, poster presentations, and GIS career lunch. The Conference agenda is available here.

Dr. Chaowei Yang, Professor of Geography and GeoInformation Sciences at George Mason University was invited as the keynote speaker. To illustrate the growing interest in GIS, Dr. Yang presented his personal journey to GIS career as well as his cutting-edge research projects emphasized in big geospatial data analysis and visualization. He also emphasized the opportunities in GIS, corroborated by the high rate of new graduate students finding highly paid jobs either as faculty, or in private sectors and as free-lance.

Followed by the keynote address was two presentations done by Dr. Kumar Navulur, president of DigitalGlobe Foundation and Dr. Wen-wen Tung, associate Professor in Earth and Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at Purdue. Dr. Navular showed how the use of space based earth observations could help us to understand our changing planet, particularly to empower the smallholder farmers or to address refugee crisis events in developing countries. Dr. Tung presented the different levels of geodata education at EAPS from BS or professional MS programs to interdisciplinary research at the PhD level.

In the display table session, researchers from different departments and centers at Purdue presented their geospatial related projects and interacted with participants with more in-depth discussions. Presenters include Dr. Ayman Habib, Civil Engineering; Casey Day, Dr. Patrick Zollner’s lab, Forestry and Natural Resources; Dr. Fenggang Yang’s Lab, Center on Religion and Chinese Society; Center for Environmental and Regulatory Information Systems (CERIS) & BoilerApps; Dr. Adam Watkins, Honors College; Mark Ehle, GIS Administrator at Tippecanoe County GIS Program; Dr. Fabian Winkler & Dr. Shannon McMullen, Visual and Performing Arts; Dr. Darrell Schulze, Agronomy; Dr. Catherine Dossin, Art History; Larry Biehl, ITAP; Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP).

As Purdue GIS Day traditions, the career lunch and poster competition again attracted students from various departments across campus. The career lunch connects students with potential GIS employers. This year we invited GIS professionals from various county and state government agencies, industry and university departments. Discussions centered on the topics students care most about for career preparation. The poster competition not only allows students to present their GIS related projects, but also provides a fun way to recognize excellent studies. According to the judges, this year’s winners were:

1st place: Jonathan A Knott, Assessing Impacts of Climate Change on Phenology Using a Common Garden Study

2nd place: Kimberly A Ordonez, Innovative object-based classification of river substrates utilizing sonar imaging data for Hellbender conservation

3rd place: Benjamin S Taylor, Forestry and Natural Resources, Spatial analysis of landfills in respect to flood events and sea-level rise using ArcGIS Pro

The success of GIS Day event is made possible by the great team work across campus. Thanks to Dean Mullins for bringing in sponsors across the campus. Thanks to Teresa Koltzenburg, Ashley Hutchcraft, Angie Ewing, and Teresa Brown for their efforts in every detail of the event. Thanks for the supports from the libraries faculty and staff who have generously offered time and efforts in setting up the event.