Workshop & Symposium of Doctoral College „GIScience“ great success

The Doctoral College “GIScience” of the University of Salzburg (http://www.uni-salzburg.at/giscience) held a Thesis Workshop on 20/21 April 2012. The Doctoral students had to defend their PhD research proposals in a highly innovative and interactive manner.  Based on a first round of review of the written proposals two selected opponents challenged the doctoral candidates in dedicated thematic sessions. In addition the student colleagues and the audience provided critical and constructive feedback. 

Half a day was dedicated to the DK GIScience Symposium. For this public forum all PhD students registered in the GIScience and the Applied Geoinformatics programmes, respectively, where invited.  

Participants had the chance to depict the essence of their doctoral research at the Symposium in form of a poster and an elevator pitch.

More than 70 students and faculty members, including invited external supervisors, lively discussed the work in progress.

Dr Lang presents Z_GIS research capacity at Harvard

Following an invitation from the Loeb Fellowship Program, Dr Stefan Lang, Head of Z_GIS Research, gave a talk at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), last Thursday, March 29. His presentation entitled “Image to information – new viewpoints on global challenges” gained a lot of attention among architects, planners, and journalists dealing with issues of sustainability, participation, and social engagement.

Dr Lang showed outstanding results from Z_GIS research activities with a focus on image exploitation and Earth observation in the humanitarian and disaster context. He highlighted the importance of assembling GI processing workflows and image analysis techniques for addressing global challenges with an efficient suite of tools. Likewise he emphasized the crucial role that a constant interchange would play with those who are in need of such information, like humanitarian organizations or the UN.

In the current academic year Dr Lang joins the Loeb Fellowship Program at GSD, Harvard University, as an affiliate enriching his research experiences in sustainable spatial planning and management, GI in disaster response and humanitarian action.

Open Trainee Position at JRC

There is currently an open trainee positions for our land use modeling group:

2012-IPR-H-000-00047 Analysis of spatio-temporal economic implications on land function dynamics (Carlo LAVALLE)

Cut off is 26th of April 2012.

The IES and JRC Web sites will be updated accordingly soon. Candidates interested in one or more of the published profiles could introduce an application form on line consulting the instructions published on the web site of IES at the following link:

http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Job-opportunities/open-calls/call-for-trainees.html

EDC 2012 Best Student Award: Christoph Mayrhofer

Z_GIS is proud to announce the recipient of  this year's 'Student of the Year' award: for his BSc paper "Implementation of Autocorrelation-Based Regioclassification in ArcMap using ArcObjects", Christoph Mayrhofer has received the annual University of Salzburg Esri Development Center distinction - congratulations!!

Based on a research paper on a newly developed approach for cartographic classification of choropleth maps, Christoph Mayrhofer implemented and extended the proposed method as an Add-In for ArcMap. This allows users to enhance the functionality of any ArcMap installation with a novel classification approach that leads to less complex and much easier to communicate spatial patterns in maps. In addition, users are given extended opportunities to explore and better understand spatial as well as attributive relationships within their data.

The University of Salzburg's Center for Geoinformatics (Z_GIS) is a member in the Esri Development Center (EDC) program, which provides recognition and special status to university departments that have exemplary programs focused on educating students to design and develop GIS applications using Esri's technologies.

Christoph is continuing a tradition of excellence established by previous recipients of this award (Mariana Belgiu and Bernhard Vockner), and thus serves as an outstanding role model for future generations of Geoinformatics students in Salzburg!

UNIGIS graduate winning top award at RTM!

Each year, the „Runder Tisch GIS“ at the Technical University of Munich awards prices for top theses in Geoinformatics. Outstanding Bachelor and Master Theses as well as PhD Dissertations compete for this distinction, with winners being announced and their work presented within the framework of the annual “Münchner Fortbildungsseminar Geoinformationssysteme”:

Today, UNIGIS Salzburg alumn Matthias Boedecker received the 1st prize for his excellent Master Thesis “Koordinierung thematischer Klassen unter Verwendung kartographischer Relationen”. Congratulations, Matthias, for this success, combined with best wishes for your professional future!