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| Visitors at UNIGIS Booth |
The UNIGIS@India team led by Dr. Shahnawaz (Director, UNIGIS S/E Asia) had a wide presence and a prominent role in this year’s India Geospatial Forum held from 10th to
12th February, 2015 at the International Convention Centre, Hyderabad. The UNIGIS booth in the exhibit area was among the most visited ones receiving prominent academics, geospatial professionals and students.
Dr. Shahnawaz also coordinated a 2 day ‘Youth Forum’ on 11/12th February focussing on Geospatial capacity building. More than 100 young students and entrepreneurs, eminent academics, prominent industry leaders and successful professionals adorned the forum and shared their rich experiences with geospatial education, research, applications and employment opportunities.
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| Participants in the ‘Youth Forum’ |
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| Mr. P- Gopi receiving UNIGIS prize |
UNIGIS has introduced a cash prize for the ‘Best Student Paper’ presented in the forum to encourage young students towards geospatial research. However, the numbers of presented papers were quite high and the quality of several papers was equally competitive so the jury decided to share the
prize among the 4 top most papers. The winners are Mr. P. Gopi (MSc UNIGIS India), Ms. V. Sakthi Kirthi (Anna University, Chennai), Ms. Natasa
Chowdhury & Ms. Shruti Menon (Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics, Pune) and Ms. C. Madhumathi / K. Sridevi (Anna University, Tirunelveli).
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| Ms. V. Shakthi Kirthi receiving UNIGIS prize |
An Annual Meeting of the UNIGIS India community was also organised on 12th February where more than 20 alumni, current students and instructors had the opportunity to meet and discuss their views about the impacts of UNIGIS Online Distance Learning on Geospatial education. The major message from alumni to the current and future students was that UNIGIS is truly dedicated to ‘Enhancing the Competences of GI-professionals Worldwide‘ and it has been serving as a catalyst in the career advancement of a large number of aspirants for about 25 years!