National science meeting session organized by JMU geoscientist

A pair of JMU faculty members will be representing JMU at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting this weekend in San Jose, Calif.

Dr. Bob Kolvoord, the dean of the College of Integrated Science and Engineering, will be a panelist during a session Sunday, Feb. 15 organized by Dr. Steve Whitmeyer, an associate professor of geology and environmental science.

For Whitmeyer, it will be his first time attending an AAAS meeting and it's also his first time organizing a session. "Instead of a national meeting for the geosciences, this is across all sciences," he said. "I think it's going to be cool. And it is certainly a different stage than a lot of the other stuff we've done."

The theme for the day will be "Innovations in Imaging Earth." The three-hour session Whitmeyer organized is titled, "Geospatial Innovations in Imaging Information Intelligently."

In addition to Kolvoord, who will discuss "Using Geospatial Technologies to Help K-12 Students Image and Analyze Information," Whitmeyer had to select five other panelists. Each panelist will have 30 minutes to present and take questions.

"We felt we had to go a little beyond the usual suspects to get something that would resonate across the audience," Whitemeyer said. The other panelists will be:

• Dr. David Thau, an engineer at Google who helped create Google Earth
• Dr. Barbara Tewksbury of Hamilton College in Clinton, NY.
• Dr. Richard Treves of the University of Southampton
• Dr. Jennifer Piatek of Central Connecticut State University
• Dr. Declan De Paor, Old Dominion University

Whitmeyer said some of the panelists will talk about using geospatial technology in education while others will discuss it more broadly, including its uses for the general public.

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