Biology

WKU students, faculty and alumni were among more than 16,000 Geographic Information Systems professionals, educators and users from 130 countries who attended the world’s largest GIS conference July 20-24 in San Diego, California.

The WKU group that attended the Esri International GIS Conference included (from left) Kevin Cary, Josh Montgomery, Scott Qualls, Taylor Berzins, Ellen Barringer and Dan Taylor.(Photo by Kevin Cary)

The conference is hosted by the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) for sharing and discussing the latest technologies and solutions in GIS. This year’s conference featured more than 1,000 sessions with 400 workshops and a total of 399 sponsors including a guest appearance by Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Esri was founded in 1969 and this year marks its 35th annual conference.

Taylor Berzins of Antioch, Tennessee, and Ellen Barringer of Louisville were selected from WKU’s GIS programs for an Esri assistantship to attend and work this year’s conference in exchange for a stipend working half days at this weeklong conference. Only 60 students are selected for an assistantship each year from the United States and WKU has average two students per year for the past 14 years to be selected.

WKU student Ellen Barringer was selected for an Esri assistantship at the 2015 conference. (Photo by Kevin Cary)

Barringer also presented a portion of her thesis research on Using ArcGIS and Network Analyst for Optimizing Campus Tour Routes.

Alumni from WKU’s GIS programs attending the conference included Josh Montgomery (WKU’s PDC), Dan Taylor (Army Corps of Engineers), Jeremy Weber (Geo-Jobe), Matthew Payne (Esri’s ArcGIS Online team), and Daniel Hendren (Pictometry Intelligent [Aerial] Images).

Weber also spoke at the plenary session in front of a crowd of over 10,000 discussing his company’s new GIS application for Esri’s ArcGIS Online web map product.

Jeremy Weber, a graduate of WKU’s GIS programs, discussed Geo-Jobe’s new GIS application. (Photo by Kevin Cary)

WKU GIS Director Kevin Cary presented his paper on Generating Scheduled Rasters using Python.

Dr. Annesly Netthisinghe from WKU’s Department of Agriculture presented his research on Field Scale Manure Born Animal Waste Management: GIS Application.

For information about applying for an ESRI student assistantship or about GIS, WKU’s GIS programs and GIS applications in business and industry, contact Kevin Cary in WKU’s Center for GIS at (270) 745-2981 or kevin.cary@wku.edu.

Contact: Kevin Cary, (270) 745-2981