UNIGIS en América Latina – first intake 2011

UNIGIS en América Latina is happy to announce its first intake in 2011. 70 students from Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, Venezuela and Nicaragua were successfully enrolled in the two year UNIGIS master's program at the University San Francisco de Quito, the coordinating university of the UNIGIS program in Latin America. Two residential seminars were held to welcome the new students in Quito, Ecuador and Cali, Colombia. Please, don’t hesitate to get to know some of our new students: http://vimeo.com/21611497

Welcome – Bienvenidos!

UNIGIS Invited to ISPRS WG VI/4 - ISRS Joint International Workshop!

UNIGIS was invited to the International Workshop on 'Multinational Geomatics Capacity Building–Achievements and Challenges' jointly organised by the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote

Sensing WG VI/4 and Indian Society for Remote Sensing, India. The workshop was organised at the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehradun (India) on 7-8 April, 2011. More than 100 delegates from India, Nepal, Nigeria, Taiwan, Thailand, Netherlands and Austria took part in the 2 day international workshop. The participants came from various government organisations as well as from education and research institutions.

Dr. Shahnawaz (Director, UNIGIS S/E Asia) delivered the leading talk in the technical session on ‘Distance and e-Learning Capacity Building Initiatives and Outreach in India and International Level’ and presented the role UNIGIS is playing in the region as well as at the international level. It was observed that UNIGIS is the only network of institutions offering Online Distance Education in GIScience worldwide.

II Open Source Opportunities in GIS Summer School. Open your mind!

The II Open Source Opportunities in GIS Summer School, organized by the GIS and Remote Sensing Center –SIGTE- of the University of Girona, will be held in Girona from June 28 to July 7, 2011.

The aim of this Summer School is to provide a space for knowledge and training of techniques, methods and resources in order to prepare students in an international working environment and competitive skills, beyond exploring the potential of Free and Open Source Software for Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

In recent years, free and open source software for GIS is gaining in strength as a real alternative to privative software. In the case of GIS, this situation represents a particularly attractive alternative because the high cost of many privative software licenses which can restrict the use of GIS and the possibilities of this software, such as the access to the source code for adapting it to users’ needs. Free and Open Source Software is in an exciting growth phase and the range of products is increasingly broad and diverse, and there is a wide range of software, so mastering this software is a key factor for professionals.

The II Open Source Opportunities in GIS Summer School is aimed at students and professionals interested in applying open source GIS in their work and research as well as sharing knowledge and experiences with a wide international audience.

Information of interest:

- Website: II Open Source Opportunities in GIS Summer School
- Pre-registration: April 4-29, 2011
- Registration: June 1, 2011 (deadline)

University of Madras preparing to join UNIGIS Network!

The Centre for Geoinformatics (Z_GIS) at the University of Salzburg (Austria) and the University of Madras (India) have entered into an Academic Cooperation Agreement for jointly offering UNIGIS study programmes at the Department of Geography, University of Madras.

Col. Dr. G. Thiruvasagam, Vice Chancellor, University of Madras and Dr. Shahnawaz, Director (South & Southeast Asia), UNIGIS Salzburg International exchanged the agreement on March 1, 2011 in the presence of Dr. (Ms) Chitra Krishnan, Director, International Centre of the University of Madras and Dr. R. Jaganathan, Head of the Department of Geography.

The University of Madras takes pride in completing its 153rd year of imparting quality education in the country and its Department of Geography has graduated a number of excellent scholars and administrators over the last 70 years.

The two partner institutions plan to launch the UNIGIS joint-study programme during summer 2011.

The 8th edition of UNIGIS studies in Kraków, Poland.

Last weekend students of intake 2011 took part in the introductory UNIGIS workshop in Kraków. In such a way the eighth edition of postgraduate studies in Geographic Information Science & Systems started at the Jagiellonian University - the UNIGIS centre in Poland.

Two years of distance learning is quite challenging, therefore the workshop was focused on giving students the best possible start into their adventure with UNIGIS. They were involved in a couple of acivities, which were supposed to establish a good communication basis among themselves and with the UNIGIS Kraków team. Some organizational and technical introductions were essential as well.

Students of intake 2011 are highly motivated to achieve their goal - becoming members of the UNIGIS alumni community. Good luck!