USGIF Announces 2015 Scholarship Recipients

The annual scholarship program supports students studying geospatial sciences.

The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) presented scholarships to 24 students as part of its annual Scholarship Program. USGIF awarded $99,000 in scholarship funds this year, bringing the total funds awarded since the program launched in 2004 to $891,000.

Through its scholarship program, USGIF is dedicated to assisting promising students interested in the geospatial sciences and furthering the advancement of the geospatial intelligence tradecraft.

“This year’s slate of USGIF Scholarship awardees represent a diversity of analytical interests to include spatiotemporal data science, visualization of Big Data analytics, GEOINT ontologies, open-source data fusion, emergency medical response in remote locations, natural language processing for activity-based intelligence, remote sensing assessment of aquifer vulnerability, and decision support systems for sustainable agriculture,” said Maxwell Baber, USGIF’s director of academic programs. “These GEOINT student revolutionaries are the future leaders of our discipline.”

This year, USGIF granted scholarships to five doctoral candidates, six graduate students, six undergraduate students, and seven graduating high school seniors. Each undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate awardee received $5,000, and graduating high school seniors received $2,000 toward their education.

All scholarship recipients are selected by USGIF’s Scholarship Subcommittee, which evaluates applicants based on academic and professional excellence.

The 2015 USGIF scholarship awardees are:

Doctorate
• Crystal English, San Diego State University/University of California, Santa Barbara
• Morteza Karimzadeh, Pennsylvania State University
• Ron Mahabir, George Mason University
• Monica Medel, Texas State University
• Taylor Oshan, Arizona State University

Graduate
• Christopher S. Beddow, University of Washington
• Seth Bishop, University of Utah
• Steven Gilbert, Pennsylvania State University
• Bridget Kane, University of Pennsylvania School of Design
• Joel Max, Pennsylvania State University
• Aishwarya Venkat, Tufts University

Undergraduate
• Sarah Campbell, West Virginia University
• Charlotte Ector, University of South Carolina
• Jory Fleming, University of South Carolina
• Courtney Koch, Harrisburg University
• Jeffrey Sherwood, Washington College
• Elijah Staple, University of Colorado, Boulder

Graduating High School Seniors
• Elizabeth Cady van Assendelft, Robert E. Lee High School, Staunton, Va.; now attending Yale University
• Kyle Bathgate, Carbondale Community High School, Carbondale, Ill.; now attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Christina Bohnet, South Lakes High School, Reston, Va.; now attending Calvin College
• Kelly Carney, South Lakes High School, Reston, Va.; now attending Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• Andy Fleming, Dominion High School, Sterling, Va.; now attending Texas A&M University, West Texas
• Colin Flynn, Heritage High School, Leesburg, Va.; now attending Northern Virginia Community College
• Daniel Gurley, South Lakes High School, Reston, Va.; now attending James Madison University

To learn more about the USGIF Scholarship Program, visit USGIF.org.