Congratulations to the Esri Young Scholar and the CAG GIScience Speciality Group Poster Winners of 2014
A few weeks ago, the Canadian Esri Young Scholar was selected. This award program was launched in the spring of 2012 and it recognizes the exemplary work of current undergraduate and graduate students majoring in geospatial science disciplines at international universities and colleges. At the annual CAG Conference, awards were also handed out in conjunction with the GIScience speciality group. Esri Canada Director of Education and Research, Brent Hall, provides an overview of this year's awards.
This post was contributed by Brent Hall, Director of Education and Research, Esri Canada
For the last three years, Esri has run a competition to select the Esri Young Scholar for each international distributor of Esri software. Last year there were 15 applicants for the Esri Young Scholar award. This year the number rose slightly to 16. The winner of this prestigious award receives an all-expenses paid trip to attend the annual Esri International User Conference in San Diego. Here, the winner meets with the other international Esri Young Scholar recipients, has a poster highlighting his/her work displayed and receives an award from Esri President Jack Dangermond. All Young Scholar applications this year were of a very high order, and the selection panel, comprised of professors from across Canada—including Trisalyn Nelson (UVictoria), Don Boyes (UToronto), Pablo Arroyo (McGill) and me—found it a challenge to select the winner. The successful candidate for 2014 is Andrew Plowright, from the University of Ottawa. Andrew’s poster titled “Evaluating the human footprint within Canada's biodiversity hotspots using Python Scripting for ArcGIS” can be viewed below.
Figure 1.1: Andrew Plowright, winner of the Esri Young Scholar, 2014
In addition to the Esri Young Scholars Award program, Esri Canada provided two awards in conjunction with the GIScience speciality group at the Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG) annual conference in St. Catharines. These awards were coordinated by Professor Tarmo Remmel, Chair of the GIScience Study Group, who reported that after a difficult decision the award for best poster was awarded to Patrick Kirby of Carleton University. His poster titled “Monte Carlo-based analysis of the effect of spatial and thematic uncertainty on bio-diversity models” can be viewed below. The winner of the best GIScience student presentation was Yeustas David of York University. His paper was titled “Quantifying runoff at the sub-watershed level with a physically based model: field measurements and the SWAT hydrological model”.
Figure 1.2: Patrick Kirby, winner of the Best Poster selected by the GIScience Study Group at the CAG Conference, 2014
We are delighted to be able to reward these worthy and hard-working students for their achievements.