Program Faculty


 

Alexis Aguilar holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles.  For his dissertation research he used Remote Sensing and GIS to study the spatial patterns of forest regeneration in Celaque National Park, Honduras.  His current research involves the use of new satellite sensors and new high resolution data to differentiate various types of secondary and degraded forests. Dr. Aguilar participated in the MS GIS program by presenting the Remote Sensing elective course in Spring of 2003.

 
Max Baber is an Associate Professor of Geographic Information Science in the Redlands MS GIS Program.  He holds geography degrees from Georgia State University (MA 1993) and the University of Georgia (PhD 1999).  Prior faculty appointments at the University of Northern Colorado and Samford University stimulated interest in multidisciplinary GIS collaborations.  Dr. Baber has received funding from National Science Foundation and other sources for a number of pedagogical GIS grant projects.  His research interests include geographic visualization and spatial analysis, particularly in the exploration of urban, cultural, and historical landscapes.  He is a member of the US National Committee for the International Cartographic Association (organizing US entries to International Map Exhibitions in Spain and Moscow) and also serves on the North American Cartographic Information Society board of directors.  Dr. Baber is a Fellow of the British Cartographic Society.
 

Josef Benedikt co-taught GIS 623 in Spring 2003, and is teaching GIS 613 in Winter 2004. He studied Geographic Information Science at the University of Vienna, Austria and the University of California, Santa Barbara and holds degrees in geography (M.A., Ph.D.) from the University of Vienna. His major interests are in GI-Processing with Uncertain Knowledge (Fuzzy Logic) and Satellite Image Processing. Since 1996 he has been self-employed, has run several projects in the field of adult education and has participated in national and international projects on GIS/fuzzy logic developments (Uzbekistan, Vietnam). He is Honorary Member of the Ecological Economical Institute (EcoEco), Hanoi, is affiliate of the ECAI-Initiative and member of the Austrian Geographical Society, Austrian Wittgenstein Society and Austrian Critical Geography. Initiatives and activities of his company (GEOLOGIC) focus on GIS/Fuzzy Logic course development for adult education as well as the added value of fuzzy logic techniques to spatial decision making processes. Currently he is running courses and seminars on GI-processing with uncertain knowledge at Austrian Higher Education Institutes (Vienna, Salzburg, Villach) as well as on GIS at the National Pedagogic Institute and a major Adult Education Center (WIFI) in Vienna. At the University of Vienna’s Geography Department he was lecturer on fuzzy logic from 1999 to last summer (2002). Current research projects include fuzzy logic based database development and mapping of vague spatial knowledge.

Aileen Buckley teaches GIS 614. Dr. Buckley recently joined ESRI to work as a cartographic researcher with the ArcMap team. Until spring of 2003 she was an Assistant Professor in the Geography Department at University of Oregon where she has taught and conducted research in cartography, geographic visualization, and environmental applications of GIS since 1997.  She received her Ph.D. from Oregon State University in 1997, completing dissertation research on on geographic analysis and visualization for landscape characterization. She is one of the authors of the Atlas of Oregon , winner of  the 2001-02 ACSM Best of Show and Best New Book/Atlas awards.  A recent research project focused on conversion of the Atlas for the Web and development of educational materials from the Atlas for teaching college geography and other subjects. Other research involved examination of changing land patterns in the Sierra Nevadas from the 1950s to the present, as well as the use of LIDAR data for landscape characterization and visualization. Additionally, she is interested in cartographic theory and concepts in light of various technological transformations. She is a current board member of the ACSM Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CaGIS), as well as past board member for the AAG GIS and Cartography Specialty Groups.

Kelly Chan taught our technology courses, some electives and co-taught our project management course series as well as supervised students in their major individual projects. His PhD is in Urban Planning from Harvard University and he earned his undergraduate and MA degrees from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. His current research interest is in location-based services.

Marinus (Marien) de Bakker taught GIS 618 in June 2002, May 2003 and May 2004. He is coordinator of  the one year full-time post-graduate course on Geo-information Studies at the Van Hall Instituut in the Netherlands. He is also Head of the Division Spatial Planning & Soil Management, located at the same institute in Groningen. He has a Masters degree in Physical Geography from the Free University of Amsterdam. After a short stint with the ITC, Enschede, The Netherlands, he moved to Groningen as a lecturer in environmental modelling and soil science. In this capacity he developed with others several GIS curricula. For more than 10 years, he has been strongly involved in the European GI education community, has given short intensive programmes on GIS in several European countries and is co-founder of the ongoing initiative EUGISES (European GIS Educational Seminars). During the last five years he has also been a consultant for municipalities and regional management regarding the choice, implementation and management of Soil Information Systems. His main research interests are: the assessment of  the quality of GI use (data quality, model uncertainty and fitness for use) and the different approaches towards GI education.

Nicholas Chrisman is Professor of Geography at the University of Washington. He taught a portion of GIS 612 in March 2002. His research has concentrated on time in GIS, data quality testing and the social and institutional aspects of GIS. From 1982-87 he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In this job, he participated in a multidisciplinary team applying GIS to soil erosion planning. This project helped provide the impetus for the Wisconsin Land Records Committee that led to the current statewide GIS program. From 1972-82 he was a programmer at the Harvard Lab for Computer Graphics. He participated in the design of prototype GIS software. His PhD is from the University of Bristol (UK) based on research on error and statistics for categorical maps. For twenty years, his writing has tried to connect the technical details of GIS to larger issues of philosophy and culture. He is the author of the GIS textbook Exploring Geographic Information Systems (John Wiley, 1997).

James Ciarrocca is a Clinical Professor in the MS GIS Program.  He oversees and coordinates all student project activities and teaches the Project Management course series (GIS 69x) for the program.  He has degrees in Forest Science from The Pennsylvania State University (B.S. 1980) and Information Technology from The University of Redlands (M.S. 2005).  Before joining the University of Redlands as a full-time faculty member in 2007, Mr. Ciarrocca taught as an adjunct in the MS GIS program for two years.  He has over 22 years experience in the GIS profession, including 16 years as a Project Manager and Systems Engineer at Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) in Redlands, CA, and six years as a Systems Analyst for General Electric Aerospace Division in Valley Forge, PA.  During that time, Mr. Ciarrocca worked extensively on a wide variety of projects for geospatial and mapping agencies within the federal government, including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  Mr. Ciarrocca’s program interests include developing and promoting practical and ethical solutions of GIS technology for consumer-oriented applications.

Douglas Flewelling is an Assistant Professor of Geographic Information Science at the University of Redlands and a Research Fellow with the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) at the University of Buffalo. Prior to his current position he was Faculty with the University of New York at Buffalo and a Research Scientist and Projects Manager with NCGIA at the University of Maine. Flewelling also spent twelve years in private industry with firms designing and implementing customized GIS software products. He has advised governments, from the local to international, on GIS implementation and management.  Flewelling’s research focuses on methods and algorithms for efficient and effective analysis and retrieval of geographic information. Particular interests include GIS support of geologic and hydrologic engineering applications, spatial data mining, levels of inconsistency in spatial databases, and integration of multi-source spatial data for environmental applications. His research has been funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the Guatemalan Department of Agriculture.

Witold Fraczek presented a seminar on the ESRI Geostatistical Analyst in GIS 613, summer 2002.  He continues to teach a component of the 613 class which is currently being taught by Josef Strobl. He has a MS in hydrology from the University of Warsaw, Poland (1976) and another MS in environmental monitoring/remote sensing from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1988). Since late 1988 he is working at ESRI in Redlands, CA. His major area of expertise are the raster products of ESRI, including Grid and Spatial Analyst. He worked on a couple of environmental modeling projects with the special emphasis on hydrologic as well as air pollution modeling. He is working closely with the Geostatistical Analyst software development group from the beginning of integration of geostatistics into ArcGIS. Recently, in collaboration with USDA Forest Service, Witold has published several papers about the use of ESRI's Geostatistical Analyst to estimate ozone concentration and the effects of air pollution on mountainous forests.

Glenn Hyman is a geographer and was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the University of Redland’s MS GIS program. He holds degrees in international studies from the University of North Carolina (B.A. 1985), and in geography from Appalachian State University (M.A. 1990) and the University of Tennessee (Ph.D. 1997). He studied geomorphology and land surface processes in the 652 km2 Rio Pacuare watershed as a Fulbright scholar in Costa Rica.  Beginning in 1996, Glenn developed continental geographic databases of crops and population as a research fellow at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).  He directed efforts in building GIS capacity and promoting spatial data infrastructures for government organizations through the Central American Geographic Information Project.   Glenn actively participates in poverty mapping and geographic information network efforts of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).  He continues his work with CIAT on agricultural systems in the Peruvian Amazon and geographic information for development in Latin America. Glenn participates in the Association of American Geographers (AAG), the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers (CLAG), the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS), and the Society of Latin American Remote Sensing Specialists (SELPER). Dr. Hyman returned to his work with CIAT in January 2003.

Wolfgang Kainz taught part of GIS 613 in summer 2003. He holds a graduate degree in technical mathematics and computer science from the Graz University of Technology, Austria, and a Ph.D. from the same university. In 1981 he joined the Institute for Digital Image Processing and Computer Graphics of the Graz Research Center, Austria, where he became head of the geoinformatics group responsible for GIS research and software development. In 1987 he moved to the Geography Department of the University of Vienna, Austria, as assistant professor responsible for GIS and digital cartography. In 1992 he spent several months as a visiting professor at the NCGIA at the University of Maine, and in September 1992 he was appointed professor of Spatial Information Theory and Applied Computer Science at the International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in Enschede, The Netherlands.  From 2000 to 2002 he also held an adjunct professor position of GIS at the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands. In February 2002 Prof. Kainz accepted the position of full professor in Cartography and Geo-information at the Department of Geography and Regional Research at the University of Vienna, Austria. Professor Kainz has more than 20 years experience in spatial information science in education, research, and consulting. His research interests are in fuzzy topology, quality propagation and spatial databases.

Karen K. Kemp is the founding Director of the MS GIS Program, in that position and Professor of Geographic Information Science until December 2005. She holds geography degrees from the University of Calgary, Alberta (BS 1976), the University of Victoria, British Columbia (MA 1982) and the University of California Santa Barbara (Ph.D. 1992). Before moving to the US in 1988, she taught in the university transfer program at Malaspina College, in Nanaimo, British Columbia (now Malaspina University College). In 1988 she joined the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) in Santa Barbara working as Coordinator of Education Programs and co-editor, with Dr. Michael Goodchild, of the internationally recognized NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIS. After completing her PhD at UCSB in 1992, she worked at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, and with Longman GeoInformation in Cambridge, England on various international GIS education projects. She returned to the NCGIA in 1994 to work as Assistant Director and later Associate Director. In January 1999 she moved to the University of California Berkeley to become Executive Director of the Geographic Information Science Center where she helped build the foundation for an innovative campus-wide GIScience initiative. Dr. Kemp has traveled widely to present workshops on GIS education and has published extensively on this topic. She was a member of the founding Board of Directors of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) and acted as senior editor of the UCGIS Education Priorities. She was also a member of the founding Board of Directors of the GIS Certification Institute (GISCI) and a member of the Editorial Team for the UCGIS GI Science and Technology Body of Knowledge. Her scientific research has focused on developing methods to improve the integration of environmental models with GIS from both the pedagogic and the scientific perspectives and on formalizing the conceptual models of space acquired by scientists, and now humanities scholars, across a wide range of disciplines.

Christopher Kroot co-taught GIS 623 in March 2003 focusing on modeling in general, cartographic modeling, advanced spatial analysis, documentation, and thinking. The primary focus on his work and research over the last 18 years has been to develop information systems to be utilized by scientists, educators, regulators, environmental and conservation organizations, to assist them in environmental and ecological modeling, mapping, and decision making. A key objective has been to develop Enterprise GIS that will operate over networks on any platform. Another objective has been to utilize existing technologies in new ways, and to integrate them with emerging technologies. These information systems enable the scientist, researcher, regulator (etc.) to access, manipulate, and analyze data themselves, without the assistance of a computer professional. The last few years he has focused on using the USDP and UML to document the workflows required for advanced spatial analysis. In his role as GIS Manager at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, he has lead the development and implementation of an enterprise GIS with over 175 users. Christopher is also the principal of Training and Research in Environmental and Ecological Systems (TREESystems), a private company that provides services to the scientific and research communities.

Mark Kumler Mark P. Kumler is the MS GIS Program Director and Professor of Geographic Information Science, with degrees in computer science and geography from Dartmouth College (BA ‘86), Michigan State University (MA ‘88), and the University of California at Santa Barbara (PhD ‘92).  Before joining the MS GIS faculty in 2004, Mark held faculty appointments at the University of Colorado, the California State University–San Bernardino, and a sabbatical appointment at the University of Auckland. He has research interests in map projections, cartograms, digital terrain models, the history of cartography, and New Zealand viticulture. He has received over $500,000 in external grants, including two from the National Science Foundation. Some of his previous publications have appeared in Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, Cartographica, and The California Geographer.  Mark has designed and directed the development of three GIS labs, and has supervised one PhD student and over 30 masters students. At the University of Redlands he teaches courses on GIS fundamentals, map projections and coordinate systems, and project management.

Richard Lawrence has over fifteen years of combined educational and professional experience in wildlife ecology. He received his B.S. degree in wildlife management in 1986, his M.S. in wildlife biology in 1990, and his Ph.D. in wildlife science in 1995. Having conducted ecological, nutritional, physiological, and socio-ecological research, Dr. Lawrence has extensive experience in wildlife ecology. He is skilled in the use of global positioning systems (GPS), spatial information databases such as ARC/INFO, and imagery manipulation packages such as ERDAS. He has organized and implemented wildlife radio-telemetry applications including survival/mortality analyses, triangulation and relocation, habitat selectivity, and other spatial analyses. Dr. Lawrence has also provided over five years of undergraduate/graduate instruction. In addition, he has working knowledge of the Spanish and Mandarin Chinese languages. In 1997, Dr. Lawrence joined ESRI as a consultant in the Environmental Group of the Professional Services Division. He teaches an elective on Environmental Modeling with GIS.

David Maguire is the newly appointed Special Assistant to the President and Senior GIS Executive for the University of Redlands.  Dr. Maguire teaches often for the MS GIS Program and works closely with U of R administrators on the university's GIS Initiative.  For ESRI, Dr. Maguire is Director of Products, Solutions and International at ESRI, where he is a member of the senior management team. He coordinates product development and oversees ESRI’s product managers who manage all aspects of over 40 products. He directs a team of professionals involved in determining enterprise solutions and oversees management and direction of ESRI’s international regional managers and distributors. His academic qualifications include B.Sc. Combined Honours Biology and Geography (Second Class, Upper Division) University of Exeter (1979), Ph.D. University of Bristol (1983) and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Previous appointments have included Technical and then Managing Director of ESRI UK Ltd. (1990-1997), Lecturer in Geographical Information Systems and Director of the MSc in Geographical Information Systems, University of Leicester (1987-1991), Lecturer II in Geography, Plymouth Polytechnic (1984-1987) and Teaching Fellow, Department of Geography, University of Lancaster (1982-1984). At Leicester, Plymouth and Lancaster he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in computing, statistics, surveying, geographical information systems and various aspects of physical geography. His past research work has been in the general area of geographical information systems (GIS) with specialization in the development of spatial analysis methods; the linkage of social, economic and environmental data; the development of spatial databases using novel methods (e.g., object-oriented design); the development of computer-based training methods; and GIS implementation strategies. He has been an invited keynote speaker at all major GIS conferences worldwide and has presented papers and speaks on GIS in over 25 countries.

John McIntosh was involved in instruction and supervision of the Technology and Project components of the program. His PhD is in geography from the University of Oklahoma. He has over ten years of professional experience in urban and environmental planning. He has worked as an urban planner in the Long Range Planning Division at the City of Fremont, as a staff analyst for the Tulare County Local Agency Formation Commission, and as an environmental planner and project planner in the Air Quality Analysis Section at the San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District. John’s primary research interests include temporal GIS and application of GIS in environmental modeling and analysis.

 

Tarek Rashed has been actively involved, professionally and academically, within an international, multi-disciplinarily career in the fields of GIS and remote sensing for the past 10 years. He holds a B.Sc. in Architectural Engineering from Egypt (1993); an M.Sc. in Computation from England (1998); a postgraduate diploma in Disaster Management from Switzerland (2000); and he recently earned his Ph.D. (2003) in Geography from a program jointly administrated by San Diego State University (SDSU) and University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).  Dr. Rashed also worked in many GIS and remote sensing project projects in the United States, United Kingdom, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Ghana, and Kuwait. His research interests span many interdisciplinary areas, including the use of GIS and remote sensing for urban hazards and disaster management, modeling population dynamics, systems analysis and design, fuzzy logic, and techniques of urban remote sensing.

Fang RenFang Ren is an Assistant Professor in Geographic Information Science.  She specializes in statistics and spatial analysis.  She received her Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 2007, with her dissertation research focusing on “The Impact of the Internet on People’s Activity-Travel Patterns.”  She has also completed master’s of science degrees in digital mapping and GIS (Ohio State, ’02) and structural engineering (Tianjin University, ’97).  Her other research interests include geovisualization, transportation and activity-travel behavior, and urban geography.

 

Basanta Shrestha is Acting Division Head of the Mountain Environment and Natural Resources Information Systems (MENRIS) Division at the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, Nepal. He taught a portion of GIS 618 in June 2002. He has a Masters of Engineering in Computer Science from the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Bangkok, Thailand. Prior to joining ICIMOD he was Computer Engineer at the National Computer Center, Kathmandu, Nepal. Mr. Shrestha played a very important role in establishing a state-of-the-art GIS technology infrastructure at ICIMOD and in the region, and contributed to improved access to geo-information in the Hindu-Kush Himalayan (HKH) region and beyond. He has planned, developed, and implemented a number of GIS applications projects and GIS, RS and GPS related training and research projects specific to mountain environments and has contributed to capacity building of national institutions through the dissemination of GIS technology and applications, creating a network base of 120 institutions in the region. 

Milosz Stasik received a doctorate in Geography from the University of Idaho in 1998 for his dissertation work on the development of a framework of a Spatial Understanding and Decision Support System; a master degree and bachelor of science degree in Environmental Biology from the Silesian University in Poland. He co-taught GIS 612 with David Maguire in Apr-May 2002 and 2003. As a Product Manager for ESRI, his current responsibilities are focused on advances of GIS and mobile/wireless technology integration, as well as internet-based mapping and location-based services (LBS). His past research interests include Computer Supported Collaborative Decision-Making in GIS and Spatial Decision Support Systems. His research also included Public Participation GIS (ppGIS or GIS2). His professional activities include teaching graduate-level GIS courses.

Josef Strobl lead the first session of GIS 613 Geographic Modeling and Spatial Analysis in July-Aug 2002 and has returned to Redlands every summer since. Prof. Strobl is an educator and researcher at the Department of Geography and Applied Geoinformatics, University of Salzburg, Austria. He holds degrees in Geography from Vienna University and has been teaching GIS and related subjects since 1985. Current research is focused on terrain modeling, GIS and RS methodology and applications, distributed GIS on the Internet, development of Web-based educational media, multimedia mapping and dynamic process modeling. As director of the Salzburg Center for Geographic Information Processing, Josef Strobl leads a research group active in distance education, landscape ecology, geodatabase technology and applications ranging from energy utilities to resource management.

Nitesh Tripathi taught GIS 624-Customizing GIS for the Web and GIS 622-Creating and Managing Geodatabases courses in Fall of 2002. At that time he was also a PhD student in the Geomatics Program at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He holds B.Sc. in Agricultural Science from G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology (1996), Rural Marketing from Indian Institute of Rural Management (1999) from India and International Masters in Geo-Information Science from Wageningen University and Research Center (MS GIS, 2001), The Netherlands. He has worked on field projects applying GIS for land use planning, transportation planning, precision agriculture and cadastral mapping in The Netherlands, Spain and US. At University of Florida, he was involved with a component project under the Land Cover Land Use Change Project (LCLUC) - a NASA initiative, taken up by the Geomatics Program. While in Redlands he also worked at ESRI in the Internet Solutions Group. Nitesh’s other academic and research interests are international development, rural and agricultural development, rural management, indigenous knowledge and role of Information and Communication Technologies particularly GIS (ICTs) for rural development.

Maurits van der Vlugt co-taught GIS624, Customizing GIS for the Web, in the spring of 2003. Maurits is a senior consultant with Australian Consulting firm Sinclair Knight Merz's spatial business unit. He is responsible for Geo-IT service delivery throughout Australasia, and is based in Sydney. Maurits provides strategic and technical consulting services with a focus on systems integration, web services delivery, distributed systems and spatial data standards. He has extensive experience in Europe, the USA and Australia consulting organizations on spatial interoperability strategies and developing creative solutions for real world problems. Maurits has deep working knowledge of geographic information technology, OpenGIS, urban planning and transportation issues. As a member of the ASDI (Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure) Technical Working Group, he is involved in the design of the ASDI.

Stephan Winter taught GIS 613 in Jan-Feb 2003. He studied geodesy with specialization in digital photogrammetry, cartography, and statistics. Since 1997 he has been working at the Institute for Geoinformation, Technical University Vienna, Austria, shifting his subject to Geoinformation Science. In 2001 he received the venia legend in Geoinformation and earned tenure with a habilitation thesis on topology and functional specifications. His current research interests focus on navigation, transport, and urban structures. In this realm he studies semantic problems of co-operating geoinformation services including formal modeling of behavior and processes, ontology and spatial cognition for the grounding of models, and vision. His special interest in Location Based Services covers technical aspects of GIS as well. Dr. Winter is Chair of the Working Group in Interoperability in the Association of GI Laboratories in Europe (AGILE). He has organized several workshops and chaired the EuroConference on Ontology and Epistemology for Spatial Data Standards in France, 2000.

ESRI Instructors – All ESRI training courses in the program are taught by professional ESRI instructors. Instructional staff at ESRI are responsible for teaching ESRI software products and the background theory necessary to understand those products to students from a variety of disciplines. All have earned at least a B.Sc. in GIS or related disciplines, and many have more advanced degrees. Most ESRI instructors have worked in government or industry, applying GIS technology to real-world problems. Because their principle duty is teaching, ESRI instructors are selected based on their verbal and written communication skills and their dedication to teaching, as well as their technological skills. When not teaching, ESRI instructors are responsible for developing the textual and graphical content of the courses they manage.

Last Updated March 17, 2008