{"id":77472,"date":"2019-02-01T14:01:12","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T22:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&p=77472"},"modified":"2022-08-29T09:24:30","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T16:24:30","slug":"esri-young-scholars-find-the-drive-to-do-more","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/esri-young-scholars-find-the-drive-to-do-more","title":{"rendered":"Esri Young Scholars Find the Drive to Do More"},"author":1312,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10412,10662,10932],"tags":[241,281,271],"arcnews_issues":[47032],"class_list":["post-77472","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arcgis-pro","category-drone2map-for-arcgis","category-esri-user-conference","tag-gis","tag-location-intelligence","tag-mapping","arcnews_issues-fall-2017","arcnews_sections-news"],"acf":{"short_description":"To help develop the next generation of leaders in GIS, Esri hosts exceptional students from around the world at the Esri User Conference.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":77482,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Esri has a vested interest in developing the next leaders in GIS. That is why every year, it hosts a group of students from around the world at the Esri User Conference who have produced exemplary work in GIS.\r\n\r\nThis year\u2019s group of Esri Young Scholars hailed from 21 countries. Some are well-versed in using GIS, and others only recently encountered the technology. Some are still undergraduates, while others have graduated with their master\u2019s degrees, and still others are pursuing PhDs.\r\n\r\nAll those who were able to make it were excited to attend the 2017 Esri User Conference in San Diego, California, and thrilled to present their work at the Map Gallery.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe moment my project was displayed at the Map Gallery, that was the greatest moment,\u201d said Serin Son, a GIS master\u2019s student at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, who used GIS to analyze the characteristics of traffic accidents involving females around Seoul to see how to improve driver safety.\r\n\r\nThe young scholars relished meeting their peers and networking with so many GIS professionals who have done tremendous work in their fields.\r\n\r\n\u201cI felt grateful to meet and make friends with my fellow Young Scholars from across the world, all connected by the same passion,\u201d said Simon Haumann, a recent graduate of the University of Vienna\u2019s master\u2019s degree program in cartography and geoinformation, whose project on optimizing the operational range of electronic bikes in routing systems won him this year\u2019s prize from Esri Switzerland.\r\n\r\nMany of the students were also inspired by the advanced technology they witnessed in demonstrations\u2014some of which they were even able to try out on the expo floor.\r\n\r\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know what ArcGIS Pro was, but I learned here,\u201d said Balca Agacsapan, an environmental engineer pursuing her PhD at Anadolu University in Turkey. The project she submitted to the competition used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and GIS to evaluate building rooftops at her university for their potential to conduct solar energy via photovoltaic panels. \u201cIn my next project, I want to use Drone2Map for ArcGIS,\u201d an app she saw demonstrated at the conference.\r\n\r\nAlan Pearse, an earth science and statistics major at Australia\u2019s Queensland University of Technology, is excited about \u201cthe\u00a0[ArcGIS]<\/em>\u00a0API for Python\u2026that works with ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise,\u201d he said. \u201cJust the fact that you can use Jupyter Notebooks and process your Python code on the fly and generate maps and do all your analysis in situ \u2014 I thought that was pretty awesome.\u201d The project he submitted to the competition involved developing an ArcGIS toolbox that calculates spatially explicit watershed attributes to better analyze the effects that land use has on stream health.\r\n\r\nTo get to San Diego, the students submitted their projects to the Esri Young Scholars competition through the Esri distributors in their countries.\r\n\r\n\u201cEsri advertised at my university for students to present a project for the contest,\u201d said Mauricio Grande from Jos\u00e9 Sime\u00f3n Ca\u00f1as Central American University in El Salvador. His project used Drone2Map for ArcGIS to quantify the impact that recent forest fires had on mountainous areas around San Salvador. \u201cYou have to work with one teacher from your university, and you have to present a work that is developed with Esri software. So you present your project, a poster, and a technical paper\u00a0[to GEOSIS, Esri\u2019s official distributor in El Salvador]<\/em>, and then you are in the contest.\u201d\r\n\r\nFor Amelie Zehndbauer, who recently graduated with her bachelor\u2019s degree in geoinformatics and satellite positioning from the Munich University of Applied Sciences in Germany, the process was a little different.\r\n\r\n\u201cI applied with my bachelor\u2019s thesis,\u201d which assessed the quality and user-friendliness of photogrammetric software, including Drone2Map for ArcGIS, she said. \u201cAn employee of Esri Germany helped me with my bachelor\u2019s thesis and gave me the hint to apply for the Esri Young Scholars competition.\u201d\r\n\r\nEmily Acheson, who is currently getting her PhD from the University of British Columbia in Canada, applied with her master\u2019s thesis, which she put together at the University of Ottawa. Studying the mosquitoes that carry malarial parasites in Tanzania, she mapped where the mosquitoes were located, as well as where mosquito nets were being used, and compared them to see if mosquito net distribution was matching the distribution of mosquitoes. It was not.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe looked at indoor residual spraying, too,\u201d she said. \u201cWe wanted to compare spraying to the nets, and we found that spraying does a good job at targeting mosquitoes.\u201d\r\n\r\nFor someone who said she initially had no background in GIS, she has certainly centered her research on the technology.\r\n\r\n\u201cI took one course during undergrad that used ArcGIS, and I fell in love with the technology,\u201d she said. \u201cI wanted to find a way to use it in my PhD. I thought it would be a great tool to study disease distribution.\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd she is doing just that. Studying a killer fungus in British Columbia called\u00a0Cryptococcus gattii<\/em>, she is now using GIS to figure out why it is in Canada at all, since it is usually found in tropical places.\r\n\r\nBeing a GIS novice, yet becoming captivated by the technology, is not unusual among this group.\r\n\r\n\u201cI had no clue what GIS was before,\u201d said Nael Al Hassanieh, who used GIS for the first time in his final project for his master\u2019s degree, which he recently received in aeronautical engineering from the University of Balamand in Lebanon. For it, he and his colleague Michelle Nassar used 3D GIS for Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport to create Obstacle Limitation Surfaces (OLS), which indicate the volume of airspace around an airport that needs to be free from obstacles, such as buildings, trees, and hills.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe location of Beirut Airport is kind of sensitive because there are hills\u00a0[and buildings]<\/em>\u00a0around it\u2026and the sea from the west side,\u201d said Al Hassanieh. \u201cIt was kind of a special project because it\u2019s the first time this analysis has been done in Lebanon using GIS with high-accuracy maps,\u201d which is ultimately why he decided to submit it to the Esri Young Scholars competition.\r\n\r\nThere are plenty of young scholars who got bitten by the GIS bug early, though.\r\n\r\nSander Varbla, from Estonia\u2019s Tallinn University of Technology, started using GIS in high school.\r\n\r\n\u201cI was in eleventh grade the first time I realized that something like GIS exists,\u201d said Varbla, who is more than halfway through his studies for a joint bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degree in civil engineering with a specialization in geodesy. \u201cWe had to do this research project with GIS, and my interest in it grew and grew.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe project he submitted for the Esri Young Scholars competition revolved around improving the accuracy of global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-based bathymetric measurements in the Baltic Sea.\r\n\r\nAnd Patricia Polo, an environmental engineering undergraduate student at the Latin University of Panama, encountered GIS early in her university studies.\r\n\r\n\u201cIn the university, we do GIS, remote sensing, spatial analysis\u2014all those subjects,\u201d said Polo, whose project analyzed noise pollution in different areas of Panama City. She was so inspired by the people she met at the Esri User Conference that she plans to continue using GIS and is even considering getting a master\u2019s degree in it.\r\n\r\nAbove all, the Esri Young Scholars were proud to present their work and energized by who they encountered and what they saw.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis was just an amazing opportunity for me to showcase my research and see how it\u2019s actually solving problems,\u201d said Keneilwe Hlahane, a GIS and remote sensing master\u2019s student in the oceanography department at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. For her project, she used GIS to monitor eutrophication (when rich nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, exist in excess in a body of water and alter the ecosystem), which is causing water quality in dams and rivers throughout South Africa to deteriorate. \u201cThis goes back to the theme of this year\u2019s conference, Applying The Science of Where, which is what I\u2019m doing. I\u2019m applying the science of GIS within water quality resources.\u201d\r\n\r\nHlahane, like so many Esri Young Scholars, left the conference with the drive to do even more.\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019ve definitely learned a lot of things,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m going to try to apply some of the methods that I\u2019ve seen here to my research to improve it.\u201d\r\n\r\nFor more information about the Esri Young Scholars program, email\u00a0Michael Gould<\/a>, Esri\u2019s global education manager.\r\n\r\nEditor\u2019s note: Some quotations in this article have been lightly edited for clarity.<\/em>"}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"\nEsri Young Scholars Find the Drive to Do More | ArcNews | Fall 2017<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"To help develop the next generation of leaders in GIS, Esri hosts exceptional students from around the world at the Esri User Conference.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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