Graduate students Laura Harrison and Danqing Xiao have received Dangermond Travel awards for the Fall Quarter. These travel expense awards are made available thanks to the generosity of Jack and Laura Dangermond and are used to help students present GIS-related work at conferences and workshops.
Laura will be attending the World Climate Research Programme Open Science Conference: Research in Service to Society in Denver, CO, 24-28 October, 2011 where she will present her research titled “High resolution projections of cropping season atmospheric evaporative demand in the African Sahel and India.” According to Laura, “the research I am presenting aims to make climate projections for a food-insecure region in Africa. It uses an approach that side-steps major uncertainties associated with the commonly used method for this task. The purpose is to provide medium-term outlooks with spatial-temporal detail useful for the food security community. This goal- providing information that can be used for planning with confidence- directly coincides with that of the 2011 WCRP conference. My objective for attending the conference is to discuss research methods with other scientists, learn about cutting edge advancements, and expand my understanding of major challenges and priorities in the field.”
Danquing coauthored a paper with Professor Dan Montello titled “Linguistic and Cultural Universality of the Concept of Sense-of-Direction” that was presented at the Conference on Spatial Information Theory: COSIT’ 11 in Belfast, ME, 12-16 September. COSIT was an ideal venue for Danqing because it is one of the most traditional, influential, and selective conferences dealing with GIScience, and her research focuses on Spatial Cognition and Geographic Information in a verbal format; because she wanted to network with other scholars in the field of Spatial Cognition; and because she received her MA from the University of Maine and was looking forward to meeting old friends and colleagues.
Note: Calls for applications for Dangermond Travel Scholarships are usually made in August (Aug. 15-22) for the Fall Quarter, December (Dec. 15-22) for the Winter Quarter, and March (Mar. 15-22) for the Spring and Summer Quarters.
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