University at Buffalo (UB)
Capturing the vibrant biodiversity of South Africa! 🌿 This stunning shot of Kleinmond Mimetes from Prof. Adam Wilson's trip highlights the successes of NASA's first biodiversity-focused airborne campaign. Discover more inspiring stories in Faculty News 📸 Photographer: O. Whitehead
In this Issue:
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D. Scott Mackay writes:
I am pleased to share with you this Spring 2024 edition of The Compass, the newsletter for the Department of Geography at the University at Buffalo. This issue arrives at the end of another fast-paced academic year. In August, we welcomed Professors Aniket Aga, Meredith Palmer, and Julie Silva to the UB GEO family. Aniket joined us from Ashoka University, Meredith from Cornell University, and Julie from the University of Maryland College Park. They have all quickly settled in, ramped up their teaching, and engaged in all other aspects of the Department’s mission. We were also honored to host Professor AJ Kim from the University of California San Diego, who was one of UB’s 2023/24 Distinguished Visiting Scholars. AJ has enriched life at UB, giving us a thought-provoking colloquium in September, advising our students, interacting with faculty, engaging with the local community, and serving as an ambassador for the Department within the university and beyond.
Our Fall Colloquium series also included five invited speakers from other universities and another successful round of Faculty Lightning Talks. Every faculty member, including Adam Wilson, who sent a recorded presentation from his sabbatical location in South Africa, gave a three-minute presentation on their current research. These well-attended talks gave us all a better understanding of what we do in the Geography Department. For the graduate students in the GEO 504 seminar course, who were asked to write an abstract that succinctly described what Geographers do based on what they learned from 20 lightning talks, it presented a tough task. I’m delighted to report they were up to the challenge.
In other events, the Department (with Ling Bian as lead) co-hosted the 2023 GIS Day with GeoCove (including President and CEO, and UB GEO alumnus Karyn Tareen), Geography at Buffalo State College, and the Geography Graduate Student Association (Max Wang, President). This was a well-attended event (with more than 70 registered). Thank you, Ling and Max, for helping to make this event a success. After a three-year hiatus initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic, we were pleased to bring back the annual Department Christmas Party. Thank you, Katie, Dawn, Wendy, and Max for organizing this well-attended event. On April 26, we will host our annual Geography Award Ceremony, where we will honor our student awardees for the Abrahams-Woldenberg Field Scholarship, Greg and Susan Aldrich Research Award, Hugh W. Calkins Applied GIS Award, Charles H.V. Ebert Physical Geography Scholarship, Dr. L. Michael Trapasso Award for Weather and Climate Impacts, our Outstanding Senior Award, and the Geography Graduate Teaching Award. Thank you to all donors for supporting our students!
I would also like to highlight a few success stories from the past year. Congratulations to Professors Ling Bian and Jessie Poon, who were elected Fellows of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), an honor bestowed on only the most accomplished members of the profession. Professor Adam Wilson was on sabbatical and located in South Africa so that he could lead NASA’s BIOSCAPE mission (Note: Adam is the lead terrestrial scientist), NASA’s first campaign to map biodiversity from above using satellite and airborne sensors with support from concurrent field campaigns. You can read more about this project in Adam’s report in this issue. PhD candidate Naiima Khahaifa, ‘24 (Advisor Marion Werner) has accepted a tenure-track position at Duke University in the Department of African and African American Studies. PhD candidate Yifan Wang (Advisor Tom Bittner) was awarded the prestigious Graduate School’s Excellence in Teaching Award. The other success stories herein shared by faculty, students, and alumni are illustrative of the continued impact of UB GEO within the profession and world at large.
This coming year, we invite you to share your updates with us and to participate in our scheduled events, including the colloquium. Finally, I thank everyone who has generously contributed to department activities, events, faculty searches, scholarships, and awards. Your contributions make a difference.
Best wishes,
D. Scott Mackay
Professor and Chair
Geography NFL Football Pool
Congratulations to the 2023-24 1st place winner, Jared Aldstadt!
The Geography Football pool has been maintained for almost three decades, with players scattered around the country and sometimes in Europe and Asia. It is a great way to maintain contact with friends from Geography. Each week, participants try to pick the winners in the NFL games. The “traveling trophy” is sent from winner to winner each year. The trophy was handcrafted in 2002 by Alum Jeff Brunskill, PhD 2005. The donuts represent an old tradition of having the winner bring donuts into the office each week. Look for the email each August inviting you to join the pool.
For more information on the pool and how to join in, you can contact the Pool Commissioner at ubgeogfootball@gmail.com.
The “traveling trophy."
Year three was a nail-biter, but Congratulations to Dr. Kristin Poinar on winning the 2023-24 Snowfall Prediction Contest.
It wasn’t much of a winter. But one big storm in January and a late snowy week in March managed to boost the total up to merely below average rather than a total bust. The competition was a sleepy one until the very end when the last few days of snow produced a flurry of lead changes. The season started off weakly with just 8” of snow total for October-December. Snowfall was 26” behind average, but a big January, highlighted by back-to-back lake effect events, fixed that and got the snow totals up to par in a hurry. Eleven straight days with measurable snowfall, including a combined 19.9” on the 17th-18th buried the city, closed the airport, and generally helped Buffalo live up to its reputation. In total, January had 45.6” of snow, bringing us to just slightly below average.
And then the snow stopped, in large part due to very warm temperatures. From January 24th to March 17th, we got a lowly 8.8” of snow, while an average year would drop 33.2” in that span. That left us sitting at 61.7” of snow in mid-March, and we’d already seen a couple 70-degree days. Our lowest guess of the season was 63.9” from Jimmy Jarvis, and it was fair to wonder if we’d even get that far.
From March 18-23, the temperatures finally dropped, and snow fell for seven straight days. On March 22, 4.3” fell, bringing the season total to 69.1” and transferring the lead to Julie Silva and her 69” guess. Julie only held the lead for one day, as 1.7” on the 23rd moved the total to 70.8” and put Max Wang in the lead with a 70” guess. Kristin Poinar was sitting oh so close with a guess of 72”, but once again it stopped snowing and temperatures climbed into the 60s. Finally, 0.3” on April 4th moved the total to 71.1” and put Kristin in the lead. The following day the last snow of the season fell, adding 0.2” to leave the season total at 71.3”, giving Kristin her first snow prediction win. Congratulations, Kristin!
Some of you may be aware that Kristin is the only non-GEO participant in the contest, having received special dispensation from the contest organizer to enter. After second place finishes in both 2021-22 and 2022-23 her win is well-deserved, but next year I expect some GEO member to take back the crown for the pride of the department.
Each year, we honor students who exemplify their hard work in specific research and in-class performance. The Department hosted an award ceremony on Friday, April 26, 2024, and partnered with our Geography Graduate Student Association (GGSA) for an end-of-semester celebration.
This year’s award winners are:
- Charles H.V. Ebert Scholarship for Physical Geography: Adam Grodek and Jianqiao Liu
Abrahams-Woldenberg Field Scholarship: Festus Adegbola
Hugh W. Calkins Applied GIS Award: Zhenqi (Ryan) Zhou - Dr. L. Michael Trapasso Award for Weather and Climate Impacts: Zhenqi (Ryan) Zhou
Greg and Susan Aldrich Research Award: Galo Maradiaga Eguez - University at Buffalo Excellence in Teaching Award: Yifan Wang
- Dept. of Geography Excellence in Teaching Award: Jonathan Townsend and Yifan Wang
The awards are funded by donations from our alumni and friends of the department, and you can direct your donation to a specific award by choosing the “search for more” option and typing in your preferred award choice. We are pleased to be able to continue these awards with your donations and we thank all for your most generous support.
GIS Day, November 15, 2023, was hosted by alumni Karen Tareen BA '98, President of GeoCove and President of NYS GIS Association, and cohosted by UB GGSA and Buffalo State University. Geography faculty and students participated in three presentations and a social. Under the strong leadership of Karen and the efforts of GGSA, attendees learned how GIS impacted communities and viewed a presentation about Experience Builder, a new ESRI product. The presentation was given by another alumnus, Colin Liu, GIS 18’.
BioSCape: Success Stories from NASA’s First Biodiversity-Focused Airborne Campaign
Dr. Adam Wilson, BioScape: Biodiversity of the Cape
BioSCape, or the Biodiversity Survey of the Cape, is NASA’s first biodiversity-focused airborne campaign led by Adam Wilson, associate professor of Geography at UB (currently on sabbatical at the University of Cape Town), Erin Hestir at UC Merced, and Jasper Slingsby at the University of Cape Town. In addition to all the folks listed below, the project involved three UB Geography postdocs (Anabelle Cardoso, Cherie Forbes, and Brian Maitner), one PhD Student (Festus Adegbola), and four undergraduates (Jacey Yang, Luna Lei, Sumaiya Chowdhury, and YanYan Chen).
Members of the BioSCape Science, Aircraft, and Instrument teams in front of the JSC GV and the LaRC GIII in Cape Town, South Africa. Photo: O.Whitehead.
The BioSCape domain in South Africa covers two global biodiversity hotspots, with the richest temperate flora and the third-highest marine endemism in the world. BioSCape is testing the limits and potential of remote sensing for biodiversity applications worldwide and will take us one step closer to measuring biodiversity variables globally from space.
BioSCape’s Unprecedented Dataset Focuses on Accessibility for Biodiversity Science
Concurrent measurements from AVIRIS-NG, PRISM, HyTES, and LVIS were captured across the region in October and November 2023. Such a spectrally extensive dataset is unprecedented in airborne science and, when coupled with structural lidar data, has immense potential to increase the impact of current and upcoming satellite missions including ECOSTRESS, GEDI, EMIT, PACE and SBG. The GV (HyTES + LVIS) flew 16 science flights while the GIII (AVIRIS-NG + PRISM) flew 22 science flights, together covering ~45,000 km2 and meeting the data priorities of all 18 PI-led projects in BioSCape. In addition to traditional L1 and L2 products, BioSCape will produce a co-registered mosaic of L2 data from all four instruments. This is the first time an airborne campaign has done this, and we expect this to dramatically increase the accessibility of the data, especially for new users. You can view the current versions of the airborne data at bioscape.io/data. Data access and analyses will be supported for both South African and U.S. data users via the “BioSCape Cloud” computing environment.
The airborne data are accompanied by a large amount of biodiversity field data, including: over 200 vegetation survey plots across environmental gradients, and field spectroscopy measurements from all dominant species; phytoplankton, bio-optics, and water quality data from marine and freshwater systems; eDNA surveys from rivers’ source to sea; sound recordings and point counts of birds and frogs across the region; terrestrial lidar scans across a fire return time gradient; quantification of essential biodiversity variables in estuaries along the coastline; detailed biodiversity and ecosystem function measurements in plots with varying levels of invasion by alien plants; and species surveys and field spectroscopy measurements on kelp forests along the coastline.
BioSCape’s Support for Decision-Making Needs in the Region and Globally
Since its conceptualization, BioSCape emphasized ensuring impact of the work, creating and maintaining deep and meaningful collaboration between researchers in the U.S. and South Africa and always emphasizing the importance of co-developing research. Early inclusion of South Africans led to a diverse Science Team of ~130 members, of which approximately half are affiliated with South African institutions and half with U.S. institutions. The U.S. participation on the team ensured global applicability, access to best-in-class technology, and bridged gaps in capacity. The strong South African presence on the team ensured that the research agenda for BioSCape was locally relevant and that local ecological expertise was incorporated. Many South African collaborators are embedded within local, provincial and national public conservation and environmental management agencies. To take advantage of this, before starting data collection, we brought the science team and local stakeholders together for a five-day in-person workshop to ensure that the research was relevant for local decision-making needs for biodiversity conservation and natural resource management.
BioSCape’s Support for Outreach and Capacity Building
BioSCape supported several community outreach events, including a public lecture attended by 150 local stakeholders, a school education program run by GLOBE that reached nearly 170 students from 10 schools, the development of a NASA Space Apps challenge attempted by 71 teams around the world as well as two local NASA SpaceApps events for high school students and the Graduate Student Conference for the South African Environmental Observation Network where 144 students had the opportunity to engage with BioSCape scientists. We also ran a workshop on the Nagoya Protocol (co-hosted by the U.S. and South African representatives), which guided documentation of shared benefits of the research (i.e., ways in which both South African and US counterparts benefit from the research). Such a document is important for managing expectations and keeping teams focused on how South African and U.S. members benefit from working together. BioSCape also has a Code of Conduct that includes clear authorship guidelines, ran a pre-deployment Ethical Participation training course, and had zero reports of harassment or safety issues during the campaign.
To ensure equitable access to and understanding of the data that were collected, BioSCape worked with NASA’s Applied Remote Sensing Training (ARSET) program to host a training webinar series that focussed on the BioSCape sensors and how they could be applied to biodiversity monitoring and will be hosting an in-person 2-day capacity development workshop in Cape Town focussing on field spectroscopy. BioSCape also worked with NASA’s ORNL DAAC to present a training webinar on the NASA DAACs, what they do, how to use them to archive your data, and data best practices. Additionally, BioSCape is supporting the ORNL DAAC to host an in-person 2-day workshop in South Africa that will focus on teaching users how to access and do basic analyses on the BioSCape data sets, as well as similar training workshops at AGU and ESA conferences in the U.S.
Associate Professor Adam Wilson with PhD student Festus Adegbola in front of the NASA GIII aircraft, which was in Cape Town, South Africa, for six weeks during the UB-led BioSCape Project. Festus spent about two months in Cape Town working with an international team, collecting data on bird diversity from ecosystems imaged by the aircraft. His work will explore how plant functional diversity, as measured using cutting-edge remote sensing, influences bird populations and abundance. This work will improve our ability to understand and manage ecosystem conditions globally using remote sensing.
Jasper Slingsby (UCT), Anabelle Cardoso (UB Postdoc), Adam Wilson (UB Professor), Cherie Forbes (UB Consultant), Erin Hestir (UC Merced Professor), and Woody Turner (NASA) in front of the NASA GV aircraft which was in Cape Town, South Africa for four weeks during the UB-led BioSCape Project.
BioSCape Science Team member Andrew Turner (CapeNature) deploying an Audiomoth acoustic logger in South Africa. Photo: J. Shelton.
BioSCape PI Jinghui Wu (Columbia U.) taking radiometric measurements of coastal ocean waters in South Africa. Photo: O.Whitehead.
School students participating in NASA’s GLOBE outreach program in Cape Town, South Africa (run by Brenna Briggs NASA ASP-GLOBE Engagement Coordinator). Photo: B.Biggs.
BioSCape Science Team members Jacob Nesslage (UC Merced) and Matthew Rossi (UColorado) collecting environmental DNA samples in a river in South Africa. Photo: J. Shelton.
BioSCape Science Team member Elhadi Adam (U Pretoria) collecting spectroscopy measurements of estuarine vegetation in South Africa. Photo: J. Shelton.
School students are participating in NASA’s SpaceApps Hackathon event, which is organized by BioSCape’s partners at the South African Environmental Observation Network in Cape Town, South Africa. Photo: A. Wilson.
Ling Bian, Professor and Jessie Poon, Professor | AAG Fellows
Congratulations to both Ling Bian and Jessie Poon on being elected as fellows of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). Recipients of the AAG Fellow are chosen for their dedication, hard work, and research contributions, which enrich their specific field of Geography.
Dr. Ling Bian is a leading geographic information scientist whose research has greatly contributed to the growth and development of quantitative approaches in geography. Her contributions include developing a groundbreaking spatiotemporal approach for modeling the spread of communicable diseases among people and through social networks, which is highly relevant to understanding COVID-19's spread.
Dr. Jessie Poon is among the world’s leading economic geographers. Her research has focused on the geographical structure of trade patterns, the dynamics of regionalization, digital economics, and social, cultural, financial and information networks.
Dr. Poon also co-directed UB’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which was held at UC Berkley in November 2023. Jessie and her co-director, Meredith Kolsky Lewis, were able to organize the in-person conference at a venue 3000 miles away for the first time since the pandemic caused only virtual conferences. Leaders, both domestic and international, including President Biden and Chinese President, Xi Jinping, worked to address comprehensive trade issues.
Many countries in the world, not just Asia, are grappling with what this new model means for international trade and investment. The conference provided a platform to address and clarify some of the confusion.
- Jessie Poon
Yingjie Hu, Associate Professor
Dr. Yingjie Hu has recently been featured by multiple news outlets for his research article “Geo-knowledge-guided GPT models improve the extraction of location descriptions from disaster-related social media messages”. This paper proposes geo-knowledge-guided GPT models to improve the extraction of location descriptions from disaster-related social media messages. Social media messages posted by people during natural disasters often contain important location descriptions, such as the locations of victims and accidents. Recent research has shown that many of these location descriptions go beyond simple place names, such as city names and street names, and are difficult to extract using typical named entity recognition (NER) tools. While advanced machine learning models could be trained, they require large labeled training datasets that can be time-consuming and labor-intensive to create. In this work, we propose a method that fuses geo-knowledge of location descriptions and a Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) model, such as ChatGPT and GPT-4. The result is a geo-knowledge-guided GPT model that can accurately extract location descriptions from disaster-related social media messages. Our method demonstrates an over 40% improvement over typically used NER approaches. The experiment results also show that geo-knowledge is indispensable for guiding the behavior of GPT models, and geo-knowledge-guided GPT models show over 76% better performance than the default GPT models without geo-knowledge. The extracted location descriptions can help disaster responders reach victims more quickly and may even save lives.
Eun-Hye Enki Yoo, Associate Professor
Congratulations to Dr. Enki Yoo on being chosen as a recipient of SPARC B, receiving up to $75,000 for two years to support work that leads to external grant submissions, scholarly publications, or significant work disseminated through other methods, such as exhibitions or performances at major venues. SPARC was created to stimulate innovative work that leads to significant outcomes in research, scholarship and creative practice.
Festus Adegbola (MS ’24, PhD Candidate)
Festus has been chosen as one of the 15 US-based (fully funded) participants for the 2024 Spectral Ecology Summer School cohort. The Spectral Ecology Summer School, hosted at the University of Virginia’s Mountain Lake Biological Station, provides a comprehensive introduction to ecological remote sensing and inclusive leadership. The program emphasizes the utilization of airborne remote sensing data from the National Ecological Observatory Network's Airborne Observation Platform (NEON AOP), as well as the development of leadership skills applicable in academia and beyond.
SPEC School is generously supported by the US National Science Foundation through an NSF CAREER award to Kyla Dahlin, an associate professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences
Jonathan Townsend '24
Congratulations to Jonathan Townsend for the second year in a row on being the recipient of the Regional Science Consortium’s Research Symposium, Jerry Covert Student Award, winning the 1st place oral presentation for his publishing. Jonathan’s winning submission was titled “Habitat suitability mapping using logistic regression analysis of long-term bioacoustic bat survey dataset in the Cassadega Creek watershed (USA)”
Jonathan was also selected as a recipient of the Department of Geography Excellence in Teaching award for 2024.
Boyu Wang, (PhD Candidate)
Boyu joined us in 2022, during the pandemic and has been busy each semester. Here is his latest publication.
Xunhuan Li (PhD Candidate)
First-year student Xunhuan Li has shared his most recent publication and award
Publications:
Awards:
- Gary Gaile Travel Award, 2024, Development Geography Specialty Group, AAG.
Jing Miao, (PhD Candidate)
Jing will begin her third year in Geography this Fall. She has shared her most recent awards and publications.
Awards:
- 2024 Student Illustrated Paper Competition Award, AAG Remote Sensing Specialty Group
Publications:
- Miao, J., Wang, J., Zhao, D., Shen, Z., Xiang, H., Gao, C., ... & Wu, G. (2024). Modeling strategies and influencing factors in retrieving canopy equivalent water thickness of mangrove forest with Sentinel-2 image. Ecological Indicators, 158, 111497
- Miao, J., Zhen, J., Wang, J., Zhao, D., Jiang, X., Shen, Z., ... & Wu, G. (2022). Mapping Seasonal Leaf Nutrients of Mangrove with Sentinel-2 Images and XGBoost Method. Remote Sensing, 14(15), 3679
Yifan Wang, (MS ’18, PhD Candidate)
Congratulations to Yifan on being selected as an award winner for the Excellence in Teaching Award for Graduate Teaching Assistants with both the University and the Geography Dept. This award is much deserved as Yifan is a favorite among students. His exceptional teaching ability and dedication to students has shown what an outstanding teacher he is.
Qingqing Chen, (PhD Candidate)
Qingqing, a third-year candidate, has shared her recent accomplishments:
Publications:
- Chen, Q., Wang, B., Crooks, A. (2024). Community resilience to wildfires: A network analysis approach by utilizing human mobility data, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 110, 102110
- Crooks, A. and Chen, Q. (2024). Exploring the new frontier of information extraction through large language models in urban analytics, Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 51(3), 565-569.
Awards:
- 2024 NSF-funded Travel Awards of AAG Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure Workshop
- 2024 GSA Conference Funding Awards/Support, University at Buffalo
- 2023 NSF-funded Travel Awards of I-GUIDE Summer School Program, UCAR
- 2023 Hugh W. Calkins Award, Department of Geography, University at Buffalo
- 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award, Department of Geography, University at Buffalo
- 2023 Quantitative Finance Women’s Mentorship Program, Morgan Stanley
Events:
- Invited to present my project at UB’s 19th Annual Celebration of Student Academic Excellence Student Showcase
- Finalist in UB’s 1st Art of Research competition
Zhenqi Zhou (PhD Candidate)
Ryan Zhou joined us in Fall 2021 and has shared his most recent publication. He is first author with his faculty advisor, Yingjie Hu
UB Sim
Congratulations to GIS Students at UB SIM (Singapore). The team, l to r. Viknavel Krishnan, Joseph Yuet Chin Cheng, and Jeng Siang Seem, won top prize in the International Geospatial Science competition with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 2024 Geospatial Challenge. They are all first-year students in the UB GIS program at Singapore Institute of Management (SIM). Their student and program instructor, Adam Grodek, is a UB PhD candidate.
Chunyuan Diao, PhD, ’17: Congratulations to Dr. Chunyuan Diao, who was chosen alongside Ling Bian and Jessie Poon as fellows of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). Recipients of the AAG Fellow are chosen for their dedication, hard work and for their research contributions which enriches their specific field of Geography. Chunyuan is currently Assistant Professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Paul J. Marko, BA, ‘00: Congratulations to Paul on his promotion to Colonel in the US Marine Corps Reserve on March 1, 2024. Paul is working in the Joint Operations Center of U.S. European Command, Stuttgart, Germany using GIS software as a tool to accomplish daily tasks.
Daniel Visone, ’85: Daniel Visone is the acting Director of the U.S. Army Geospatial Center (AGC) in Alexandria, Virginia, and serves as the Geospatial Information Officer (GIO) on the Army staff. In these roles, he leads and directs the development and integration of the Army Geospatial Enterprise (AGE) to enable systems within Programs of Record; lends Geospatial Intelligence expertise to develop and field tools for optimizing location data; and provides geospatial products, data, and training for an array of military operations.
John Kavanagh, BA ’02: John has been shaping young minds, sharing UB Geography ArcMap lessons with the Clarence Center Boy Scout Troop 27 and his son Joshua for his Eagle Scout service project. Scouts in Troop 27 used GPS mobile apps to survey the unmarked trails at Town of Clarence's undeveloped Beeman Creek Park. Then they drafted and installed a trail map to inform all seasons of activity.
LaDona G. Knigge, PhD, ‘06: LaDona Knigge is retiring from California State University, Chico in July 2024. Dr. Knigge started at Chico State in fall 2006 after she completed her PhD at UB. She was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2012 and full professor in 2016. She has been the department chair in the Department of Geography & Planning at Chico State since fall 2018. LaDona has her PhD in Geography and was an IGERT fellow in the first IGERT cohort (1999). Her advisors were Dr. Meghan Cope and Dr. David Mark and her dissertation was on community gardens in Buffalo, NY titled “Emerging Public Spaces in Marginalized Urban Places: The Political Economy of Community Gardens in Buffalo, NY.” She had her BA from University of Wyoming (1999).
LaDona and her partner Willis Geer were married at Niagara Falls on Oct 10, 2005 before she left Buffalo. Willis passed away on March 2, 2015.
Xiang Ye, MS, ’14, PhD, ‘20: The National Natural Foundation of China’s (NSFC) Young Scientist Program, accepted Xiang Ye’s proposal which is centered on the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP): how MAUP will impact the R^2 in linear regression. “The MAUP has been my leading academic interest since my Ph.D. period, and I hope this grant can further my career along with my love.”
Paul Scipione, MA, ’71: After distinguished careers in commercial market research and academia, Dr. Scipione returned to his undergraduate alma mater as professor emeritus, serving as a role model for Geneseo students. He retired from SUNY Geneseo in December 2015.
Dr. Scipione retired from a tenured Full Professorship in Marketing in the School of Business at Montclair State University in June 2004. He has a unique dual background in the fields of Consumer Psychology and Economic Geography. Since beginning his MR career in 1973, he has designed and directed more than 1,000 research projects for such clients as: AT&T; Dun & Bradstreet; Federal Trade Commission; General Electric; IBM; Ingersoll-Rand; Johnson & Johnson; Kraft/General Foods; National Institutes of Health; Nestle USA; United States Justice Department (including consulting on the antitrust case against Microsoft in 1995); U.S. Postal Service and Young & Rubicam Advertising. During recent years he has specialized in litigation research, health care market studies, the development of market simulation models and demographic analysis. In the latter field, he is noted for having directed the first-ever nationwide survey of the Baby Boom Generation (1984) for ad agency client N.W. Ayer (Publicis).
He also directed the basic research that led the Federal Trade Commission to mandate informational stickers on all new cars and trucks and on most home appliances. Earlier, he and Dr. Herbert Abelson, conducted basic research that led to unit pricing to help consumers in retail stores. His book A Nation of Numbers (Quirk’s MR Media, 2015) is the authoritative history of the MR industry and began with his interviews of Dr. George Gallup in Princeton during the latter years of the research pioneer’s life.
Prior to teaching, Dr. Scipione held several senior executive positions: Copy Research Director (U.S. offices) at Young & Rubicam, New York; and Senior Vice President and Group Head at Response Analysis Corp, Princeton (now GfK). He is a graduate of SUNY Geneseo (BS, 1968); SUNY Buffalo (MA, 1971); and Rutgers (PhD, 1973), where he was a Henry Rutgers Fellow.
Dr. Scipione’s basic research focuses on: (1) the metrics of how consumers make real-world estimations; (2) perceptual distortions as the basis of consumer decision-making; and (3) delineation of commercial territories and communities of interest. Dr. Scipione has also developed several research methodologies, including the Pre-Sight copy research system; the Visually Evoked Response Test; the Communications Positioning Technique (ComPosiT) for measuring advertising effectiveness within a brand positioning framework; and the I-OK, the only validated test used by companies to select employees for international assignments.
At SUNY Geneseo, Dr. Scipione taught courses in Marketing Research, Consumer Behavior, The Business of Health Care and the Intd105 Freshman Writing Seminar. At MSU, he was proud to have received – by vote of students – the awards for Outstanding Business Professor (1988) and MSU Professor of the Year (2003).
Dr. Scipione is the author of numerous papers and reviews in peer-reviewed journals. He is on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing and is the author of twelve books, including: The Senior Market in America (1976); The Marketing of Alcohol Beverages (1979); and the popular textbook Practical Marketing Research, available in several languages; and Western New York Vital Signs in 2010. His tenth book, A Nation of Numbers: The Development of Marketing Research in America, was published by Quirk’s in 2015 and is now in its fourth hardcover printing. His professional memberships include: AAG; AAPOR; APA; ARF and SCP.
For decades he also maintained the private practice of Paul A. Scipione, Ph.D., where he pioneered the hybrid field of combining employee surveys and government statistics to help employers make relocation decisions. His clients included AT&T, Bell Labs, GE, Hillier Architecture, Ingersoll-Rand, Mercedes, Simmons Beautyrest, TIAA/Cref, and Johnson & Johnson, which in part made its decision to keep its new headquarters in New Brunswick, NJ based on Scipione’s survey of J&J employees.
Dr. Scipione has also been active in public service. For 20 years he was the longest serving Member of the New Jersey Agent Orange Commission, originally appointed by Gov. Thomas Kean in 1984 and reappointed by Govs. Jim Florio, Christine Todd Whitman and James McGreevey. He was Chairman of the Commission in 2000-2004 and was a Principal Investigator on NJAOC’s pioneering Pointman I and II, ABDC and NJ Physician studies and Editor of the Commission’s Physicians’ Desk Reference (2002). He served in the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam during1969-70, is a Life Member of the 101st Airborne Division Association and Vietnam Veterans of America and past officer of the New Jersey State Council of VVA. He is the author of two books about the Vietnam War, the novel Shades of Gray (1988) and MARS: Calling Back to ‘The World’ From Vietnam (1994), the official history of Military Affiliate Radio System Operations. A new e-book edition of his MARS Vietnam book will soon be published by Texas Tech.
In private life, Dr. Scipione, scipione@geneseo.edu, is an avid ham radio operator (AA2AV in the US; 3W3AV in Vietnam), FCC License Examiner, Past President of the Electronic Technology Society of New Jersey, and now a member of SIARC in Canandaigua. During the Gulf War, Scipione served as National Public Relations Officer (AAA9PR) of the Army MARS System. He was inducted into the Greek Hall of Fame at SUNY Geneseo in 2009 while serving as faculty advisor to Phi Kappa Chi. He and his wife Linda (also a 1968 SUNY Geneseo alumnus) now live in the resort community of Canandaigua, New York.
Author Website & Quarterly Blog: nationofnumbers.com
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