The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) is pleased to announce that Dr. Song Gao, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Wisconsin – Madison, has been selected to receive its inaugural Early-Mid Career Research Award. Dr. Gao is also the current President of Chinese Professional in Geographic Information Sciences (CPGIS).

As a young scholar in the field of GIScience, Dr. Gao’s scholarly output constitutes an impressive list of well-cited publications that are proving to furnish innovative ideas and methods impacting the theory and practice of GIScience within the interface of geospatial artificial intelligence (particularly machine learning), big spatial data, and a more humanistic oriented place-based GIS. In addition, Dr. Gao has secured substantial sums of external funding to support his research, and has begun filling GIScience Community leadership roles. The UCGIS Research Awards Review Committee assesses that Dr. Gao has achieved a national and international GIScience profile and reputation that far exceeds expectations for a junior scholar.

The UCGIS Early-Mid Career Research Award is to celebrate an outstanding early-mid career research record of innovative ideas or methods that lead to research impacts on the theory and/or practice of GIScience or geographic information technology. UCGIS will honor Dr. Song Gao and other award recipients as part of its Symposium 2022 programming activities.