Scholarship Winners 2023

1st Place Winner: Amy Johnson

Amy Johnson is a GIS professional continuing her education at Austin Community College. She recently completed an internship with the Texas General Land Office and plans to further her GIS career by pursuing the GIS II Certificate. She is interested in using GIS analysis in Natural Resource Management and using GIS mapping and models to benefit people and the environment. Amy enjoys spending time with her family outdoors swimming, hiking and biking around her favorite city of Austin.

Texas Coastal Sediment Composition.pdf

2nd Place Winner: Chad Ramos

Chad is a GIS Analyst for the City of Kyle and a second year graduate student in the department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Texas State University. He is interested in data analysis and cartography and hopes to advance his career into the fields of hazards or emergency management, while still making use of his skills in GIS. Chad will start his third and final year as a graduate student in the fall and has chosen to study neighborhood-scale evacuation in the face of urban wildfire as his Master's research. He spends much of his free time hiking and hopes to one day complete the Pacific Crest Trail.

Neighborhood Wildfire Evacuation Risk.pdf

3rd Place Winner: Lauren Carey

Lauren Carey wants to change the world with GIS. She is a junior undergraduate student at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. She is studying to earn her Bachelor's degree in GIS and is the lead undergraduate researcher studying wildfires across Texas. In the next year, she hopes to publish an academic paper covering what she has unearthed about Texas wildfires and their impact on communities throughout the state. Lauren is also the multimedia editor for the university's newspaper, juggling many of the social media accounts as well as newspaper productions. Her passions outside of academia include backpacking, learning how to play the guitar, and long walks with her dogs Hunter and Scout.

High Plains to Cross Timbers.pdf

Crowd Favorite Winner: Joe Johnson

Joe is a first year doctoral student of Agronomy at Texas A&M University - College Station. Recipient of Borlaug International Scholarship and Lechner Scholar Grant from the College of Agriculture and Life Science, Texas A&M University.

His interests are in combining robotics, artificial intelligence and GIS in the field of precision agriculture. The focus will be around 3D measurements of crop using deep learning methods in global perception.

He has three years of experience as an assistant professor in the department of Mechatronics engineering and three years as a researcher at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi for developing deep learning solutions for the identification and detection of crop diseases using drone images. As a part of the precision agriculture project team, Joe has contributed to developing an imaging hardware setup for the collection of field-based multispectral data using an unmanned aerial vehicle (assembled), a lightweight handheld multi-camera setup and an IoT-based fixed height imaging network. All the precision agriculture hardware and software solutions were implemented for the advancement of agriculture in different states in India. Furthermore, Joe was part of different national level conferences to disseminate research findings and train farmers and students of different levels on precision agriculture and automation technology. A total of three peer-reviewed journal articles, six international conference articles and two conference abstracts in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence have been published.

Severe Flooding in Harris County.pdf