UCGIS Assembly Review

UCGIS held a successful Assembly on October 20-24, 2004 in Adelphi, Maryland at the elegant Inn and Conference Center, University of Maryland University College.This year, the assembly was moved from its usual June schedule to October to be held in conjunction with the GIScience 2004 conference.

The assembly welcomed researchers and students from over the world, from both member and non-member institutions. Special welcome was extended to those researchers and students from UCGIS international affiliate member institutions and other international institutions.Students from 15 UCGIS member institutions received travel awards to attend the assembly.

The assembly was highlighted by the award ceremony where David Mark, the recipient of the UCGIS Researcher of the Year, and Karen Kemp, the recipient of the UCGIS Educator of the Year, were recognized for their achievements in advancing geographic information science research and education.Young researchers, Ola Ahlqvist and Diansheng Guo, received the Intergraph Young Scholars Award. Jennifer Miller and Le Wang received the ESRI Young Scholars Award. Tarek Rashed was awarded the GeoMedia grant sponsored by Intergraph.

The main events of the assembly featured a series of student paper and poster presentations.Students presented results of cutting-edge research projects in a range of disciplines that involve geographic information science.The cheese-and-wine reception at the poster session and the questions-and-answers section at the paper session facilitated intriguing discussions among delegates, students, and other attendants.Thirteen posters authored by 16 students were selected for the poster presentation, and three papers were selected for presentation in a special session designated for the best student-authored papers.Two papers won the Cartography and Geographic Information Science Journal Prize and Transactions in GIS Prize and will be published in the two journals, respectively.Four additional students won the Student Presentation Award and Best Poster Award . The e-proceedings for both the papers and posters are available online in full-paper format.

At the Council meeting, UCGIS president, officers, and committee chairs reported recent activities and issues of interest and concern to the UCGIS community.The fun moment of the assembly came at the annual UCGIS GIScience Bowl.Hosted by the Bowl Master, Harlan Onsrud (pictured at left), a large number of student teams, with help of their faculty lifelines, competed for the grant prize.The team "Loosers" won the grand prize . All of these serious and fun moments at the assembly are captured in an automated slide show with photos contributed by volunteer photographers at the assembly.