Abstract: Spatial computing has enriched billions of lives via pervasive services (e.g., navigation and ride-sharing apps), ubiquitous systems (e.g., Global Positioning System, Geographic Information System), and pioneering scientific methods (e.g., spatial statistics, spatial cognition). It is only a beginning and major growth is projected by a 2019 National Academy report, the 2011 McKinsey Big Report, etc. motivating the need to create and enrich pathways for learning and education, and workforce development. This presentation looks at the recent educational initiatives such as the current AAG Encoding Geography, and the UCGIS Call for Bringing the Geospatial Perspective to Data Science Degrees and Curricula. It points out that the programming languages rise and fall often affecting careers. Thus, students should learn computational thinking skills beyond programming to prepare for changes during their careers. It also discusses the relationship between computational thinking and programming using an analogy of the relationship between geometry and land surveying with illustrations from geography. This perspective is based on spatial computing educational activities such as creation and teaching of spatial computing campus and massively open online courses, co-authoring a textbook, co-editing an Encyclopedia, leading an NSF IGERT project, and service on a national academy committee on GEOINT workforce.
Bio: Shashi Shekhar is a Mcknight Distinguished University Professor at the University of Minnesota (Computer Science faculty). For contributions to geographic information systems (GIS), spatial databases, and spatial data mining, he was elected an IEEE Fellow as well as an AAAS Fellow and received the IEEE-CS Technical Achievement Award, and the UCGIS Education Award. He was also named a key difference-maker for the field of GIS by the most popular GIS textbook . He has a distinguished academic record that includes 300+ refereed papers, a popular textbook on Spatial Databases (Prentice Hall, 2003) and an authoritative Encyclopedia of GIS (Springer, 2008).
Shashi is serving as a co-Editor-in-Chief of Geo-Informatica : An International Journal on Advances in Computer Sciences for GIS (Springer), and a series editor for the Springer-Briefs on GIS. Earlier, he served on the Computing Community Consortium Council (2012-15), and multiple National Academies' committees including Models of the World for USDOD-NGA (2015), Geo-targeted Disaster Alerts and Warning (2013), Future Workforce for Geospatial Intelligence (2011), Mapping Sciences (2004-2009) and Priorities for GEOINT Research (2004-2005). He also served as a general or program co-chair for the Intl. Conference on Geographic Information Science (2012), the Intl. Symposium on Spatial and Temporal Databases (2011) and ACM Intl. Conf. on Geographic Information Systems (1996). He also served on the Board of Directors of University Consortium on GIS (2003-4), as well as the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Eng. and IEEE-CS Computer Sc. & Eng. Practice Board.
In early 1990s, Shashi's research developed core technologies behind in-vehicle navigation devices as well as web-based routing services, which revolutionized outdoor navigation in urban environment in the last decade. His recent research results played a critical role in evacuation route planning for homeland security and received multiple recognitions including the CTS Partnership Award for significant impact on transportation. He pioneered the research area of spatial data mining via pattern families (e.g. collocation, mixed-drove co-occurrence, cascade), keynote speeches, survey papers and workshop organization.
Shashi received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of California (Berkeley, CA). More details are available from http://www.cs.umn.edu/~shekhar.