This September, our very own Dr. Greg McDermid of the ABMI Remote Sensing Group was honoured with the 2012 CAFA (Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations) Distinguished Academic Early Career Award at an awards ceremony in Edmonton. The award recognizes those academic staff members who have made outstanding contributions to the wider community while in the early stages of their career. Greg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary, where he began in 2005, and is Co-Director of the Foothills Facility for Remote Sensing and GIScience. Over the past seven years, Greg’s innovative research into the use of various geospatial tools in support of wildlife ecology and environmental management, supported by NSERC and Alberta Innovates Technology futures among others, has comprised numerous interdisciplinary collaborative projects and involved over 50 students, research assistants, post-docs and visiting scientists. Last year, Greg’s exceptional work earned him the 2011 University of Calgary, Faculty of Arts Distinguished Research Award.
Greg is an expert in remote sensing and geographic information sciences, and has applied his knowledge and skills to a variety of fields, including vegetation mapping, ecological monitoring, and biodiversity assessment. Greg and members of the Remote Sensing Group have played a critical role in the ABMI’s efforts to derive important province-wide information on habitats and human footprint from remotely-sensed data sets, beginning with the ABMI photo-plot interpretation protocols, and more recently, with the completion of a province-wide 2000 land cover map. Greg has also been an active, long-time contributor to the mapping of grizzly bear habitat as part of the Foothills Research Institute Grizzly Bear Research Program, and continues to participate in the landscape analysis and monitoring efforts of the Crown Managers Partnership, an international collaboration of researchers and managers from Alberta, B.C., and Montana. With his ongoing involvement in multiple collaborative research efforts and continuing effort to training of new geospatial scientists, Greg’s exceptional contributions to the wider community will continue to grow. Congratulations, Greg!
See the official announcement at: http:// www.ualberta.ca/CAFA/