NGA: Research and Job Opportunities

The National Geospatial Agency (NGA) has following openings for US Nationals. The deadline for application is April 30, 2008.

Mathematics of Complex Networks for GeoINT Analysis
NGA analysts need to capture and analyze spatial and temporal aspects of both manmade systems used for communication, commerce, and other infrastructure, and of natural systems that underlie physical, biological, and social phenomena.

Applicants should have received a Doctoral Degree in mathematics or statistics or related discipline within three years of the desired starting date, or completion of all requirements for the degree should be expected on or about the starting date. Current college or university faculty members on sabbatical will also be considered.

Computer Vision Specialist, Visiting Scientist
NGA is developing a suite of adequacy evaluations for computer vision tools. The evaluations will be built on properties of remotely sensed images that appear to be sources of difficulty in image understanding. The effort includes identification of image characteristics frequently associated with failure of computer vision approaches, development and testing figures of merit, assembling test data, executing benchmarks and evaluating results. NGA anticipates using the fruits of this effort to identify priorities for future research and to assess progress toward NGA goals.

Spatial Language Specialist
The Intelligence Community relies extensively on natural language (both written and spoken) accounts of geography and of movement. Today’s tools for extracting information from such accounts are extremely limited, and tools for integrating and comparing the extracted information, even more so. Intelligence analysts need to capture, extract and analyze descriptions of location and of movement from natural language texts such as newspaper accounts or written narratives. We are particularly interested in approaches which extract and represent complex spatio-temporal relationships among objects of interest, including accounts of movement, in forms that can be visualized, manipulated, and integrated with other data such as stable geospatial data sets or data bases of events or movement.

Applicants should have received a Doctoral Degree in linguistics, computer science, engineering, geospatial information science or a related discipline within five years of the desired starting date or should expect to complete all degree requirements on or about the starting date. Current college or university faculty members on sabbatical will also be considered.

Assessment of the NASA Applied Sciences Program 2007

NAP has published a report that examines NASA's Applied Sciences program and

1. identify strengths and weaknesses in NASA's approach to achieve its strategic objectives to realize economic and societal benefits from Earth science, information, and technology
2. determine the extent to which the partner agencies and national organizations (e.g., Climate Change Science Program) have found that their collaboration with NASA is helping them carry out their decision-support goals
3. evaluate the extent to which the program has been able to engage the broader community (e.g., private sector, academia, non-governmental organizations) in developing improved decision-support tools, and
4. assess possible issues in assuring that the transfer of NASA?s research results into decision support products maintains the scientific integrity of the data and models.

The report can be fond on this NAP Web page

Source:SDI-NorthAmerica Digest, Vol 33, Issue 3

Introduction to GIScience:course by Univ. of Chieti, Italy

GISCIENCE.it has announced a course on "Introduction to GIScience: Principle and techniques for application development, visualisation and spatial analysis" a 40 hours course scheduled from April to June 2008.

The course, adopting a theoretical/practical approach, will cover Fundamentals of GIS, Spatial data and modelling, ArcGIS 8/9™ introduction, Relational and geographic databases, Data acquisition, editing and data quality (metadata), Spatial analysis.

The course will also address on Further issues in GIScience: education and project management: the debate on GIS, GI System or GIScience? From a technical to an epistemological approach. GIScince education in the private and public sector, the role of distance learning and part-time graduate studies of international institutions (UNIGIS, City University,Birkbeck College, della Penn State University). GIScience role in the organisations, integration with the traditional information systems, prototyping techniques, cost/benefits analysis (SWOT, Boston matrix). Foundation of distributed client-server architectures: from Desktop to GIS Internet GIS.

Mode details on the course can be found at www.GISCIENCE.it

Contract faculty opportunities at UofM

The Department of Geography in the College of Liberal Arts, announces the availability of one 100%-time, nine-month, contract faculty appointment at the rank of assistant professor for three years in Geographic Information Science at the Twin Cities campus beginning Fall Semester 2008...

Jump to the post "GIS opening in geography" at chris uggen's weblog.

Interview with Dr. Duane Marble by Directions Mag

Recently (February 19, 2008 ) an interview of Dr. Duane Marble was published in Directions Magazine conducted by Nora Parker. This interview was relating to William L. Garrison Award that is presented to encourage doctoral-level students to "increase their knowledge of computer science and to apply this knowledge to their research in geographic science."

I would like to bring out the crux of the interview. It is encouraged to refer to the full version for your own conclusions though ;-)

The salient points were:

• Digital computing that started half a century ago provided an opportunity to geographers new ways of looking at and solving complex spatial problems. but at that time it was difficult for them to understand the complexities of computing as the computers were really expensive and most of the times not accessible.
  
• After 50 years there is a totally different scenario. As Dr.Duane points "computers have assisted us in discovering that geography is far more than static maps or even comparative statics (e.g., map overlay)". Instead of the notions that mathematical models of space-time processes are very difficult the GIScience community "has been forced in our practical work (largely by the massive amounts of spatial data represented by our planet and all the things on, in and above it) to utilize computer approximations based upon heuristic algorithms and specialized and efficient data structures."
• Today instead of such advanced conceptual development, the GI-scientific community is severely hampered by many scientists whose education has taken place in environments with little formal knowledge of computer science and its potentially substantial contributions.
• Looking at such problems where " a significant number of bachelors and masters level graduates in geographic science who have had only a minimal exposure to formal computer science concepts", the Garrison Award is to try to provide an incentive for young scholars at the doctoral level - in any discipline and in any part of the world - to increase their knowledge of computer science and to apply this knowledge to their research in geographic science.
  

Want to continue reading or want to have a look at the detailed interview, then don't hesitate to click this link "Dr. Duane Marble Explains William L. Garrison Award".

Junior Professor requirement at Institute for Geoinformatics, uni-muenster

As of April 1, 2008, the Institute for Geoinformatics at the University of Münster has an opening for a Junior Professor.

The new faculty colleague will be expected to build and manage a research group, teach two courses each semester (at least 4 hours a week, in German and/or English), advise graduate students, and contribute to administrative duties.

More information can be found at this link