GIS day 2019 at Purdue

The 11th Purdue GIS Day celebration activities were hosted by Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies. This year’s event includes two parts: GIS Day High School Program (September 27th, 2019), and GIS Day Conference (November 7th, 2019). Both programs are great opportunities for Purdue students and local high school students to learn about geospatial information, its application in research and real-life, career opportunities, as well as GIS development and future trends.

The GIS Day Conference was held at the Stewart Center. Following the success of preceding editions, more than 300 students, faculties and staff from various department on campus, services and agencies from local community.

As Purdue GIS Day traditions, career lunch have attracted students from various departments across campus. The career lunch connects students with potential GIS employers. Dr. Beth McNeil, Dean of Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies gave the opening remarks (Figure 3). We invited GIS professionals from various county and state government agencies and industry. The panel included Karen Arnold, GIS Specialist, Deckard Engineering & Surveying, P.C.; Clair Bammann, Graduate Development Program Engineer, INDOT; Kari Hicks, Sr. Data Analyst, Duke Energy; Joe Mallory, Senior Scoping Engineer, INDOT; Hamunyari Anxious Farukayi, Operations Analyst, INDOT; Vanessa McCauley, Crawfordsville Pavement Asset Engineer; Ted Roesner, Indiana Census; Paul Turner-Smith, Chair, IGIC Education Committee; Christina Hupy, Senior Education Program Manager, GitLab; Chris Knochel, Newton County Surveyor. Discussions centered on the topics students care most 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. With the increasing interest in student poster competition, this year the competition had two categories: undergraduate student and graduate student. According to the judges, this year’s winners are

Undergraduate student poster competition:

  • 1st place: Ryan Riley, Implementation of Unmanned Aerial Systems in Search and Rescue
  • 2nd place: Alan Pecor, Using GIS Resources to Plan UAS Missions
  • 3rd place: Yi (Echo) Qui, Mapping Post-Colonial Literature

Graduate student poster competition:

  • 1st place: Aishwarya Chandrasekaran, UAS Imagery for Automatic Measurement of Tree Canopies in a Red Oak Plantation
  • 2nd place: Ana Morales, Effects of Removing Background Soil and Shadow Reflectance Pixels from RGB and NIR-based Vegetative Index Maps
  • 3rd place: Danielli De Melo Moura, Soil Erosion Analysis of the Monroe County’s Watersheds in Indiana Using GIS

The GIS Day planning committee include Larry Biehl (ITaP Research Computing), Angela Ewing (Libraries and School of Information Studies), Michael Fosmire (Libraries and School of Information Studies), Thomas Gerrish (Libraries and School of Information Studies), Ashley Hutchcraft (Libraries and School of Information Studies), Jarrod Hurt (Libraries and School of Information Studies), Teresa Koltzenburg (Libraries and School of Information Studies), Nicole Kong (Libraries and School of Information Studies), Shirley Li (Libraries and School of Information Studies), Shames Rahmani (Department of Agronomy), Steven Smith (Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences), Annapurni Subramaniam (Libraries and School of Information Studies), Lydia Utley (Department of Forestry and Natural Resources).

The GIS Day Conference is co-sponsored by the Purdue College of Agriculture, Discovery Park, College of Education, College of Engineering, Honors College, College of Liberal Arts, Libraries and School of Information Studies, Krannert School of Management, Polytechnic Institute, Office of the Provost, College of Science, and College of Veterinary Medicine.

The agenda for Purdue GIS Day Conference 2019 is available insert link here.

Browse the contents of 2019:

2019 Presentations
2019 Posters
2019 Lightning talk
2019 Keynote