Geospatial Forums:
Check out the WyGISC YouTube channel for all of our past Geospatial Forums:
Other news:
- UW’s WyomingView Trains Student Interns in Remote Sensing - October 13th, 2023
This past summer, the WyomingView program crossed a major milestone. The program,
which trains the next generation of remote-sensing scientists and experts, passed
100 student interns.
"Since the first cohort of WyomingView interns was trained in 2004-05, the program
has seen 103 student interns, most of whom have been University of Wyoming undergraduate
students", says Ramesh Sivanpillai, a senior research scientist from UW’s Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center (WyGISC).
- DataHub Phase Two Demonstration Project Grants RFP - Due October 8th, 2023
The UW Data Hub, a component of the Wyoming Innovation Partnership (WIP), seeks proposals
to support innovative data-sharing and data-integration projects at the University
of Wyoming.
With this call, the grant program will provide funds to UW units or individuals to
either enhance or expand established data sharing deployment activities or develop new data-sharing
or data-integration capacity, with the goal of demonstrating the value of an integrated, cross-disciplinary research
information infrastructure supporting the WIP’s broad programmatic goals.
- Eight Teams to Compete in John P. Ellbogen $50k Entrepreneurship Competition April
22-23
Laboratory Inventory Management Systems (LIMS) is an end-to-end solution of software
and hardware designed to contextualize samples first drawn from the field, as they
get processed in the lab, and long after work has concluded. LIMS offers a safe, reliable
and compliant way to collect, track, maintain and report data throughout a project’s
lifetime. Team members are Shannon Albeke, a senior research scientist in UW’s Wyoming
Geographic Information Science Center; and Nicholas Case, a UW graduate student from
Laramie, who is majoring in geospatial information science and technology.
- Hodza Promoted to Senior Research Scientist
Congratulations to WyGISC faculty member Dr. Paddington Hodza (PhD, West Virginia
University, 2007) for his recent promotion to Senior Research Scientist. Dr. Hodza
joined the University of Wyoming in 2013 as an Assistant Research Scientist and WyGISC
Assistant Director. He was promoted to Associate Research Scientist and WyGISC Associate
Director in 2016, a position he held until 2021. Dr. Hodza is a certified GIS Professional,
licensed FAA Drone Pilot, past recipient of a Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship
and a Leadership Wyoming alumnus (Class of 2017). Dr. Hodza currently serves on the
Board of Directors of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science.
His current research interests include unmanned aerial systems, multimodal GIS education,
positivity GIS, immersive geovisualization, and spatial data science. Once again,
congratulations to Dr. Hodza on this significant achievement!
- Driese Appointed Emeritus Lecturer
The University of Wyoming Board of Trustees recently approved WyGISC Senior Lecturer
and former Geospatial Information and Technology (GIST&T) Program Director Dr. Ken
Driese as Emeritus Senior Lecturer.
The title of Emeritus Senior Lecturer is awarded to faculty members who retire after
long and meritorious service to the University.
Driese joined WyGISC in 2001 as a remote sensing scientist, where he established a
remote sensing lab and began teaching the core of the remote sensing curriculum at
UW. Following subsequent appointments in the Botany Department and Life Sciences Program,
Driese returned to WyGISC in 2019 to help design, launch, and direct the Center’s
new interdisciplinary GIST Program before retiring earlier this year.
“This is a well-deserved appointment, recognizing Ken’s many contributions to WyGISC
and the UW community,” notes WyGISC Director Jeff Hamerlinck.
Congratulations, Ken!
- WyGISC's Di Yang received NASA EPSCoR Grant: "NASA SMD Computational and Information
Sciences and Technology Office (CISTO): A Meta-Learning Framework for Characterizing
and Accessing Training Data for GLOBE Observer Mosquito and Land Cover Protocols"
The goal of NASA EPSCoR is to provide seed funding that will enable jurisdictions
to develop an academic research enterprise directed toward long-term, self-sustaining,
nationally-competitive capabilities in aerospace and aerospace-related research.
Yang will be using the grant to host a series of activities (hackathons) across Wyoming to explore and develop deep learning
tools to segment, characterize, classify, and label components of land cover photographs
from the GLOBE Observer (GO) land cover and mosquito habitat app.
- Daniels Fund Faculty Fellows Selected at UW
The Business Ethics Program at the University of Wyoming, supported by the Daniels
Fund Ethics Initiative (DFEI), recently named 15 UW employees as 2021 Daniels Fund
Faculty Fellows.
- UW Professor Has Shared Satellite Images With Laramie Schools For Last Decade
Years ago, Ramesh Sivanpillai had a feeling that satellite images taken from afar
could help bring some closer perspective to lessons being taught to Laramie students
in elementary and middle school.
It turns out he was on to something. Sivanpillai, a senior research scientist from
the University of Wyoming’s Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center (WyGISC),
has been visiting classrooms with his images -- depicting everything from crop fields
to forests to lakes to cities to water diversion in the Aral Sea -- for a decade now.
- GeoHub Website Updated
The Wyoming Geospatial Hub (GeoHub) website was updated. The site leverages ESRI's
Open Data platform in ArcGIS Hub.
Upcoming events:
WyGISC Geospatial Forums - Fall 2023
When we have speakers available, there are talks in Engineering room 2105 every Wednesday
from 12:10pm - 1:00pm.
Check out our Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin for more information on the different speakers each week.
Past events:
9-H SmartRanch - Drone Operations
In this internship/project, a team of four UW students will apply their collective
education, training,
and experience in addressing research questions related to the identification of weed
species using drone-mounted sensors, image processing software, and machine learning
techniques. Students will further explore the use of drones for precise herbicide
application and mosquito breeding abatement. The team will be mentored by faculty
from UW’s interdisciplinary Geospatial Information Science & Technology (GIST) Program.
