Harvard University Graduate School of Design

The Howard T. Fisher Prize Awarded for Second Year

The Howard T. Fisher Prize for excellence in Geographic Information Science was established in 1999 by the Harvard University GIS User's Group, to promote and reward student work in this broad and potentially interdisciplinary area from both undergraduate and graduate students at Harvard University.

Howard Fisher founded the Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1965.

"As a geographer and mathematical cartographer, Howard Fisher was a key person who influenced my life at Harvard," says Esri President Jack Dangermond. "The laboratory he founded was where many original ideas for GIS started."

The Committee of the Howard T. Fisher Prize in Geographic Information Science, Harvard University, is pleased to announce two recipients of the award for the academic year 2000-2001:

• Scott Bassett, of the Graduate School of Design, in the graduate category, for his paper entitled "Combining Species Richness and Visual Preference Models for the San Pedro River Basin, Arizona, U.S.A., and Sonora, Mexico." Bassett's work (prepared for his doctoral thesis at the Graduate School of Design) was recognized for the application of GIS technology to a sophisticated model of spatial analysis and resource allocation, with the goal of protecting the biological spectrum and resources in the San Pedro River Basin region.
• Irina Harris, of the Extension School, in the undergraduate category, for her work entitled "Data Integration and Visualization GIS Project," an archaeological analysis of a site in Bezymiannaya in the Ukraine (prepared for CSCIE-40, a computer science course in the Extension School) was noted by the judges for "a wonderful application of integrating two-dimensional and other data and generating three-dimensional visualization."

For more information, visit www.gsd.harvard.edu/prizes/gisprize.

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