GEOG Students Shine at 2022 AAG Annual Meeting

At this year’s American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, 12 students from the Department of Geographical Sciences will be sharing their research in virtual poster and paper presentations. They will be joining thousands of leading geography researchers, GIS specialists, and experts in related disciplines to share the latest research and applications in the field. 

For some students, this will be their first time presenting at a professional conference. BS/MS student Natalie Memarsadeghi, who will be sharing her work on a machine learning-based model of malaria risk in Thailand, is looking forward to her first conference. “I hope to learn about other cool projects going on, support my friends presenting in the department, and share my work with an audience,” she says. 

Undergraduate GEOG major Alana Ginsburg, who will also be attending her first conference, is similarly excited: “I am grateful that the Department has given me this exciting opportunity to share the research I have been working on for the past year.” Under the guidance of Dr. Ritvik Sahajpal and Dr. Catherine Nakalembe, Alana has been using Earth observation data to forecast maize crop yields in Kenya. “I am looking forward to hearing from experts in the field at the many panels and hopefully making some new connections."

For many PhD students, this won’t be their first time presenting at the AAG conference. PhD student Guimin Zhu, who presented at last year’s conference, will be presenting his research on COVID-19 and mobility in Florida. He hopes that his poster presentation will draw attention to his research and “promote [his] publication to more people interested in citing [his] work.”

PhD candidate Jeff Sauer, who will be sharing part of his doctoral research on the space-time patterns of prescription opioids across the U.S., is excited to return for his second appearance at the conference. “Interestingly, AAG has now been online since 2020! They have a well-organized presentation system that makes the experience easy to navigate,” he says. He also plans to attend the AAG Career Fair and Individual Career Advice sessions, which he notes “are [great opportunities] to network for both academic and industry-sector jobs.”

In addition to the strong student showing at AAG, many other GEOG researchers will be making their mark at the conference. Of note, Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies Dr. Amanda Hoffman-Hall is being awarded with the Jacques May Thesis Prize for her May 2020 doctoral dissertation. GEOG Professor and Director of the Center for Geospatial Information Science Dr. Kathleen Stewart and Assistant Professor Dr. Taylor Oshan each helped organize three sessions and will be participating as panelists in additional sessions. 

 

Check out a full listing of Department participation here.

The 2022 AAG Annual Meeting takes place virtually from 2/25/22-3/1/22. Learn more here.

Published on Wed, 02/23/2022 - 15:29