[OSGeo-Announce] Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Lab established at North Carolina State University

Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Lab established at North Carolina State University

We are pleased to announce the establishment of first Open Source Geospatial Research and Education (OSGeoREL) Laboratory in the United States at the Center for Earth Observation, North Carolina State University, Raleigh. The laboratory is one of the founding members of a worldwide network developed under the auspices of the ICA-OSGeo Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

In 2011, the International Cartographic Association (ICA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) with a view to develop global collaboration opportunities for academia, industry and government organisations in the field of open source GIS software and data. The MoU aims to provide expertise and support for the establishment of Open Source Geospatial Laboratories and Research Centres across the world to support the development of open source geospatial software technologies, training and expertise.

OSGeoREL at NCSU is led by Dr. Helena Mitasova and Dr. Laura Tateosian. The laboratory has an established program in graduate education in geospatial information science and technology using FOSS4G and extensive research in geospatial analysis, modelling and visualization with focus on natural resources.

Dr. Helena Mitasova is an Associate Professor at the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, OSGeo charter member since 2006, member of the OSGeo education and conference committees and Sol Katz award recipient http://www.osgeo.org/solkatz. She has been actively involved in the GRASS GIS development since 1991 and together with Markus Neteler she has co-authored the first book about GRASS GIS.

Dr. Laura Tateosian is Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Earth Observation Her research interest focus is on visualization, human visual perception, computer graphics, geospatial sciences, non-photorealistic rendering, and human-computer interaction.

More details of the lab at http://gis.ncsu.edu/osgeorel/

For those of you attending the Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Symposium (OGRS 2012)http://www.ogrs2012.org/ later this month it will be good opportunity to also hear Helena’s Keynote presentation on “Building open source geospatial education at research universities” to get more ideas on future research activities.

Our aim is to establish 20 new research labs in the next 3 years. These new research labs are strategic to help us accelerate research developments in this research area for the future. If your university wishes to establish Open Source Geospatial Lab, please contact Suchith.Anand@nottingham.ac.uk

We look forward for your active participation for building up Open Source, Open Standards, Open Data research globally and helping share the benefits of geospatial technologies to all.