Design School awards Fisher Prize to two

The Committee of the Howard T. Fisher Prize in Geographical Information Science (GIS) has announced that Scott Bassett of the Graduate School of Design (GSD) and Irina Harris of the Extension School are this year’s prize recipients.

In the graduate category, Bassett received the prize for his paper titled “Combining Species Richness and Visual Preference Models for the San Pedro River Basin Arizona, U.S.A., and Sonora, Mexico.” In the undergraduate category, Harris won for her work “Data Integration and Visualization GIS Project.” Each will receive a cash prize of $2,000.

Basset’s work, which he prepared for his doctoral thesis, was recognized for the application of GIS technology to a sophisticated model of spatial analysis and resource allocation, with the goal of protecting the biological resources in the San Pedro River Basin region. The judges for the prize called Bassett’s project “a wonderful application of spatial analysis,” adding that, “the final mapping was very impressive.”

Harris’ work – an archaeological analysis of a site in Bezymiannaya, in the Ukraine – was prepared for CSCIE-40, a computer science course at the Extension school. Her project was noted for “a wonderful application of integrating 2-D and other data and generating 3-D visualization,” and was cited as “an interesting and unusual application of GIS.”

The Howard T. Fisher Prize for excellence in GIS was established in 1999 by the Harvard University GIS Users Group. It is intended to promote and reward student work – both undergraduate and graduate – in this broad and potentially interdisciplinary area.