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HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES Design School Establishes Prizes in Geographic Information Science
The Howard T. Fisher Prize in Geographic Information Science (GIS), to be awarded annually to students throughout Harvard University for excellence and invention in the field of GIS, has been established by the Graduate School of Design. Two $2,000 prizes will be awarded to GIS projects each year, one at the undergraduate level and one at the graduate level. The first prizes will be announced in spring 2000. GIS – the use of computers to create maps and manage and analyze spatial data of all kinds – is increasingly used throughout Harvard’s professional graduate schools, as well as in courses in the undergraduate curriculum in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Lucia Lovison-Golob, a researcher in Earth and Planetary Sciences and founder of the University-wide GIS Users Group, whose efforts led to the creation of the prize, says, "Because GIS is so important in so many disciplines, we established this prize to spread awareness and foster training about geospatial technology in all departments of the University and to reward valuable and creative work being done with GIS here at Harvard. November 19 has been declared national ‘GIS Day.’ " An initial endowment of more than $10,000 has been contributed toward the prize by Jack Dangermond (MLA ’69), founder and CEO of Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). The prize is named after the geographer and seminal computer cartographer Howard T. Fisher who established the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis (LCGSA) at the Graduate School of Design in the mid-1960s. Stephen Ervin, assistant dean for information technology at the Graduate School of Design, is chairman of the committee that will award the first prize. Competition for the Howard T. Fisher Prize is open to all students at Harvard University. Details about the prize and requirements for submission can be found at http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/prizes/gisprize.
Copyright 1999 President and Fellows of Harvard College |