'Young Researcher Award in GIScience': 2018 Winners

The Austrian Academy of Sciences' Commission for GIScience annually selects the winner of a 'Young Researcher Award' competition, based on an outstanding publication submitted by applicants. This year we had received a record number of submissions, the review-and-selection process identified two winners tied for first place.

We are glad to extend our congratulations to:

Min Chen from the Key Laboratory of Virtual Geographic Environment (Ministry of Education of PRC), Nanjing Normal University with the paper:

Min Chen, Hui Lin, Mingyuan Hu, Li He, Chunxiao Zhang. (2013): Real geographic scenario based virtual social environment: integrate geography with social research. Environment and Planning B - Planning & Design, 40(6): 1103-1121. doi:10.1068/b38160

Pablo Cabrera-Barona from Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales and Universidad San Francisco de Quito with the paper:

Cabrera Barona P., Blaschke T. and Gaona G. (2017): Deprivation, Healthcare Accessibility and Satisfaction: Geographical Context and Scale Implications. In: Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy.

Congratulations again - and we will soon be announcing details for the 2019 'Young Researcher Award in GIScience'!

Helena Mitasova awarded 2018 Waldo-Tobler GIScience Prize

The Austrian Academy of Sciences through its Commission for GIScience is awarding the GIScience Prize named after Prof Waldo Tobler to a scientist having demonstrated outstanding and sustained contributions to the discipline worthy of inspiring young scientists in Geoinformatics and Geographic Information Science, and having accomplished significant advances in research and education.

The received nominations were reviewed and assessed by an external panel of peers, who unanimously recommended to award the 2018 prize to Prof Helena Mitasova (North Carolina State University).

Congratulations to this recognition of innovation, leadership and excellence!

Prof Mitasova has made significant contributions to the methods and tools of Geographic Information Science over several decades documented by an excellent publication record. Geovisualisation, geostatistical and geospatial analyses, eg in the field of spatial interpolation and topographic methods today implemented in the GRASS open source environment are freely available for practitioners worldwide. She is an active member of the OSGeo Foundation, recognized by the 2010 Sol Katz award for exceptional Open source geospatial community service. 

Helena Mitasova is a graduate of the Slovak Technical University in Geodetic Cartography and serves as a professor at the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (MEAS), and a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Geospatial Analytics, North Carolina State University (NCSU), Raleigh, NC. She has received numerous awards and actively contributes to the 'geospatial' community, as an editor, reviewer and most importantantly as a supervisor directing young scientists.

Prof Mitasova is an outstanding role model for next generation leaders in the geospatial sciences, and we are honoured to highlight her contributions in particular in the spirit of Open Science!

Prof David Mark awarded first Waldo-Tobler GIScience Prize!

The Austrian Academy of Sciences (bi-) annually through its Commission for GIScience is awarding the GIScience Prize named after Prof Waldo Tobler to a scientist having demonstrated outstanding and sustained contributions to the discipline worthy of inspiring young scientists in Geoinformatics or Geographic Information Science, and having accomplished significant advances in research and education.

Based on nominations received, the 2016 prize was awarded to Prof David M. Mark (SUNY distinguished professor and NCGIA director). Congratulations! To quote Waldo Tobler who graciously agreed to be connected with this prize: "David Mark is a very worthy candidate. In my opinion he is one of the most original thinkers in the field. A very fine scholar and important individual in GIS. His contributions are of the sort that will last! "

On June 6, the inaugural prize was presented to David Mark in person in Vienna at an Austrian Academy of Sciences function, following his lecture on "How do People Conceptualize the Landscape? Fundamentals for Geographic Information Science".

ÖAW GIScience commission chair Prof Josef Strobl presenting the prize to Prof David Mark

Prof David Mark with the Waldo-Tobler prize insignia

Nominations welcome for Waldo Tobler GIScience Prize

The Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) is inviting nominations for this year's Waldo-Tobler Prize, which has been established through the ÖAW Commission for GIScience!

This distinguished prize recognizes the work of Professor Waldo Tobler, who introduced innovative methods based on digital technologies into geographic research since the 1960s, with an emphasis on theory, mathematical modeling and dynamic visualization. Since 1982, Prof. Tobler has been a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Well known through his extensive publication record, he formulated the "First Law of Geography" in 1970 with the phrase “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things" which inter alia justifies analysis of spatial dependencies, metrics for spatial autocorrelation and spatial organisation in general.

Nomination letters for the Waldo Tobler GIScience Prize shall be sent to application@oeaw.ac.at no later than August 31, 2015. Candidates shall be introduced with a cover letter justifying the nomination, a full scientific CV and list of publications.

The prize will be awarded to an individual who has made outstanding and sustained contributions to the discipline worthy of inspiring young scientists in Geoinformatics or Geographic Information Science, and has accomplished significant advances in these fields. Qualifications should ideally include achievements in research as well as in education.

>>> Complementing this prize for scientists with outstanding stature within the Geoinformatics and Geographic Information Science communities, the ÖAW Commission for GIScience is announcing a top paper competition as the Young Researcher Award in GIScience.