DEPARTMENT FACULTY UPDATES

Dr. Murray Rice has been working on research in two different areas. First, he is completing a handbook entitled "Pathways to Actionable Results with Business GIS", which should be published later this year by Caliper, Inc. (publisher of the Maptitude GIS software package).Caliper will also publish a related blog and set of webinars that complements the main book content. Second, Dr. Rice is starting a new research project focused on the positive and negative neighborhood impacts of Airbnb properties. He has completed an initial publication that provides an overview of the research potential from analysis of one of the most widely available open-source Airbnb data sources. Aside from writing, Dr. Rice is enjoying teaching our applied retail geography (4220),statistical research (4185) and introduction to the geography major (2110, with Steve Wolverton) classes this spring.

Dr. Wei Kang recently received a UNT research seed grant to investigate affordable housing policies and neighborhood outcomes in the DFW region. This project will jumpstart her research in the DFW area. Dr. Kang is also working on an NSF grant looking at housing insecurity and community resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on Inland Southern California. Earlier this year, Dr. Kang was invited to join the editorial board of Computers, Environment, and Urban Systems, an interdisciplinary journal publishing cutting-edge and innovative computer-based research on urban systems, systems of cities, and built and natural environments, that privileges the geospatial perspective. Dr. Kang taught two courses this Spring semester, Introduction to Python Programming to undergraduate students, and Advanced GIS to graduate students. Dr. Kang is excited to teach and grow with those amazing students, and she has started to work with several amazing GIS+CS students to pursue the Undergraduate Research Fellowship.

This term, Dr. Paul Hudak is teaching GEOG 2180 and 4800 as well as supervising independent studies. His students in GEOG 2180 are exploring interactions between people and the physical environment, including exercises in sustainability, earthquakes, and flooding. Capstone students are writing proposals on such wide-ranging topics as sustainable practices at soccer stadiums, preserving and promoting green spaces, native plantings and riparian corridors, sustainable food production, home-schooling trends, and language preservation.

Paul's recent research includes Saharan dust markers in fine particulate matter above northcentral Texas, segmented trenches for recovering contaminated groundwater, and propagating buttonbush at high-energy lakeshores. Recently, Paul was recognized by Wiley for a top-downloaded article on riparian fragmentation, and he is on Stanford's list of the world's top-cited scientists.