Our Alumni

HYOWON BAN

Ohio State Geography was, and still has been one of the best environments for research, teaching and service for me. In my memories, many departmental events in and around the Derby Hall such as colloquiums, individual talks with invited scholars, reports for the fields, GIS day games, departmental potlucks and gatherings with cohort graduate students are still alive.

These days I have been doing research about: 1) visualization and Relative Motion (REMO) analysis of moving objects such as vessels, 2) visualization of the uncertainty in concepts of undersea features — e.g., seamounts — and ocean features — e.g., seas, 3) uncertainty in spatial data and its challenge and visualization, 4) conversion of geospatial information into music and design, 5) spatial thinking on the developmental disabilities and its visualization, and 6) instruction of ethics in GIS.

Since my graduation in 2009, Ohio State Geography continuously has been one of my major sources for my career development. For instance, I have been organizing the "Paper Clinic" for students presenting at professional venues such as AAG in my current Department of Geography at California State University, Long Beach, since I joined to the department. People in my department have loved the clinic so much, and I feel grateful to Ohio State Geography for giving me such good experiences during my study.

In addition, I often find people around me still get stunned by the Synchronous Objects project (synchronousobjects.osu.edu) that I participated as a project team member in spring 2009 at Ohio State. The project was a multidisciplinary work to understand "dance" from many different perspectives in geography, statistics, mathematics, computer science, architecture, philosophy, design, music and dance. The project was awarded Communication Arts 2010 Interactive Annual Award (Information Design category: Synchronous Objects). These days I still find that there are several things uncovered from the project yet, and I plan to continue the exploration in the near future with up-to-date methodologies in GIScience.

ALUMNI NEWS

Brian (BA, 1976, geography) and Sherri Lewis We are delighted to announce Brian and Sherri Lewis have endowed a fund for merit based undergraduate scholarships. This award will recognize students with high overall GPAs with emphasis on cartography and GIS. Brian has a special affiliation with our mapping and GIS program and has had a very successful career at Lockheed Martin.

Zach Paganini (MA, 2017) His Master’s Thesis work on flooding in Canarsie was mentioned in the New York Times recently. The article “In New York, Drawing Flood Maps Is a ‘Game of Inches”, articulates many of the subtleties of flood risk and flood insurance facing the country today. Zach is pursuing a PHD degree at CUNY, Earth & Environmental Sciences program.

Tenure & Promotion Nurcan Atalan-Helicke, (PhD, 2010) has received tenure and promotion at Skidmore College.

Hyun Kim (PhD, 2008) has received tenure and promotion at the University of Tennessee.

Shih-Lung Shaw (PhD, 1986) has been appointed Interim Associate Provost & Director of the Center for International Education. Shih-Lung was featured in the alumni spotlight in the last GeoSpectrum.

Enzhou Wang (MA, 2001) is the City of Bellevue, Washington’s, IT Manager in charge of IT Development, Design & eGov Alliance Delivery Teams.

Ling Zhuan (MA, 2000) started her own company GISTAN LLC (dba GIS Technology & Analytics)

Nick Crane (PhD, 2014) is now the Political Geography editor at Geography Compass as well as an Assistant Professor in Geography at the University of Wyoming.