Computer Graphics Technology Junior Faculty included in multidisciplinary research team recently awarded $15 million NSF Institute
Assistant Professor, Dr. Vetria Byrd, is part of the multidisciplinary winning research team awarded October 1, 2021, a five-year $15 million award from the National Science Foundation establishing a new institute for geospatial data-driven scientific research. The principal investigator is Shaowen Wang, professor and head of the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science at the University of Illinois. The Purdue team is led by Research Computing senior research scientist Carol Song.
The Institute for Geospatial Understanding through an Integrative Discovery Environment (known as I-GUIDE), will be based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and will help researchers better estimate and predict risk and anticipate impacts from natural disasters or climate change. Purdue is the largest partner in this coalition, and Purdue faculty members involved in the project include Mark Daniel Ward, professor of statistics, Thomas Hertel, distinguished professor of agricultural economics, Iman Haqiqi, postdoctoral research associate in agricultural economics, Venkatesh Merwade, professor of civil engineering, Vetria Byrd, assistant professor of computer graphics technology, and David Johnson, assistant professor of industrial engineering.
Byrd’s contribution will focus on educational and workforce development objectives of the I-GUIDE which will include: understanding, learning from, and forging connections with communities of practice, designing connections to the I-GUIDE platform to support research-linked learning pathways, and developing innovative instructional and training activities for convergence science education.
This project is funded by NSF award number 2118320. This article first appeared with Information Technology Research Computing