During the UNIGIS International annual network meeting, held this year in Krakow - Poland, the 2013 winner and runners-up in the UNIGIS Academic Excellence Award, dedicated to the network's top Master's theses, were announced:
First place;
- and Winner of the Academic Excellence Award - Victoria Ann CLIFF (UNIGIS - Sub Saharan Africa), for her thesis entitled: "The integration of GPS and GIS technologies as a methodology to monitor beach-dune systems: Port Elizabeth, South Africa".
Shared second place;
- Maja RAPP (UNIGIS - Salzburg), for the thesis: "Biomass-mapping of alpine grassland with APEX imaging spectrometry data".
- Jeroen Gerhard STEENBEEK (UNIGIS - Manchester/Amsterdam), thesis title: "Bridging the gap between ecosystem modelling tools using Geographic Information Systems".
The award jury, comprising members from UNIGIS UK and Lisbon, and chaired by Jacek Kozak from UNIGIS Krakow, acknowledged the high standards achieved by all the Master’s theses entered for this year’s award from across the UNIGIS International network. The final decision on the award winner and runners-up was based on assessing all entries against criteria comprising: literature review, technical and methodological quality, relevance, presentation and originality. The final decision between the top three was extremely tight. Congratulations to all the winners!!!