GGE Holds Student Technical Conference
Photos: Terry Arsenault, 2010-March-25

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The two-day-long program included oral presentations from undergraduate and graduate students on topics related to geodesy, metrology, technical surveying, navigation, cadastre, land administration, ocean mapping, hydrography, remote sensing, and photogrammetry.

The conference started on Wednesday afternoon. It opened with a welcome address by the organizers: Carlos Alexandre Garcia and Sven Commandeur. Then the session chair, James Mtamakaya, introduced the speakers. The session was devoted to presentations by undergraduate students: a total of ten students presented their technical reports.

Thursday's session started with the graduate student paper competition. The session chair, Krista Amolins, introduced the four speakers. The afternoon session started with four undergraduate presentations. Then the undergraduate student paper competition followed after the coffee break. Five students were nominated to participate in this challenge. While the judges were making decisions, the graduate student paper awards from McElhanney were announced by Prof. Susan Nichols, head of Graduate Studies. The prizes were $1000, $300, and $200 for the first, second, and third place, respectively. The best paper was by Simon Banville. He spoke about antenna rotation and its effects on kinematic precise point positioning. The second place went to James Mtamakaya. His presentation was on harmonic analysis of position and observation residuals on the reprocessed IGS global network. The third place went to Patrick Adda, who spoke about developing LiDAR data acquisition and quality assurance specifications for New Brunswick.

Then Dr. James Secord announced the winners of the undergraduate student paper competition. The first place $1000 award was offered by the Canadian Institute of Geomatics and went to Joey Chessie, who spoke about wetlands and their influence on the profession of land surveying in New Brunswick. Both second and third place awards were offered by Midwest Surveys. The second place $300, went to Matthew McAdam. He spoke about optimization of GPS in ground subsidence surveys. The third place $200, went to Travis Hamilton, who spoke about modelling the effect of oceanic internal waves on the accuracy of multibeam echosounders.

After the conference, participants joined for refreshments at the reception that was hosted by McElhanney. The conference could not have been the success it was without our sponsors: McElhanney, Canadian Institute of Geomatics, and Midwest Surveys. In addition, we would like to thank the GGE secretaries for their behind-the-scene work. On behalf of all GGE students and staff, we would like to thank them for their efforts.

Undergraduate winners, left to right: Matt McAdam(2nd), Joey Chessie(1st), and Travis Hamilton(3rd).

Patrick Adda receiving his 3rd place prize.

James Mtamakaya receiving his 2nd place prize.

Simon Banville receiving his 1st place prize.