News from the 2008 UCGIS Winter Meeting
http://www.ucgis.org/winter2008

The Winter Meeting took place February 7-8 at the Doubletree Hotel, Washington, D.C.. The theme of the meeting was GIScience and Cyberinfrastructure: Making Connections.  The meeting attracted delegates from member institutions from across the United States, representing academia, industry, and government.

 
Highlights:
  • Election of new officers, appointment of new committee chairs
  • Presentations by representatives of federal agencies
  • Briefings from UCGIS member institutions
  • Discussions on GIS certification and licensure

Election of New Officers

2008 Winter Meeting of the Board of Directors

 Robert McMaster, University of Minnesota, assumed the position of UCGIS President in February 2008.
 
Timothy Nyerges, University of Washington, was elected President-elect.

Sean Ahearn, Hunter College, City University of New York moved from the position of President to past-President. 

Tom Cova, University of Utah, and Jeremy Mennis, Temple University, were elected to the Board of Directors. 

New committee chairs include Dawn Wright, Oregon State University, Research Committee; Tarek Rashed, University of Oklahoma, Young Scholars Committee; and Jeremy Mennis, Temple University, Communications Committee.

The President's term, and the terms for past-President and President-elect, were changed from one year to two years.  The change will go into effect at the next Winter Meeting in 2009.    

Federal Agency and Industry Presentations

David Lightfoot's presentation

Rob Raskin [Knowledge as Cyberinfrastructure: Toward Geographic Knowledge Systems (GKS)]   Mr. Raskin is Supervisor of the Science Data Engineering Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  He is a founder of the new AAG Specialty Group on Cyberinfrastructure.

Rebecca Shuford [NOAA's Approach to Data Integration and Standards within the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS)]  Dr. Shuford is an Oceanographer with the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) Program Office, NOAA.

David Lightfoot [New NSF Initiatives in Cyberinfrastructure]   Dr. Lightfoot is Assistant Director at the National Science Foundation, where he heads the directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.

Kim Robson [The DNI Open Source Center: Information to Intelligence]   Ms. Kim A. Robson is a Senior Executive serving at the Director of National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and Open Source Center as the Deputy Director for Community Integration.

John Lueders  Booz, Allen and Hamilton

Briefings from UCGIS Instituions

Wenge Ni-Meister's presentation

Shaowen Wang   Dr. Wang is assistant professor of Geography, and Senior Research Scientist at the National Center of Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Wenge Ni-Meister [Land, Water, Carbon, and Climate: the Earth from Above]   Dr. Ni-Meister is associate professor of Geography Department at Hunter College of The City University of New York.

Chaowei Phil Yang [Utilizing the Cyberinfrastructure to Support GIScience]   Dr. Yang is Assistant Professor of Geographic Information Science and director of the joint Center for Intelligent Spatial Computing at George Mason University.

David Dibiase  Mr. DiBiase directs the Dutton e-Education Institute at Penn State University, and leads Penn State’s online Certificate and Masters degree programs in GIS.

Sean Ahearn  Dr. Ahearn is a Professor of Geography and Director of the Center for Advanced Research of Spatial Information (CARSI) at Hunter College - CUNY.

2008 UCGIS Summer Assembly
http://ucgis.org/summer2008

The Summer Assembly will be held June 23-24, Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Registration is now open!

University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (http://ucgis.org/)
Communications Chair: Jeremy Mennis