Speakers

Douglas Richardson is the Executive Director of the Association of American Geographers (AAG). During the past ten years, he led a highly successful organizational renewal of the AAG and has built very strong academic, research, publishing, and financial foundations for the organization's future.

Prior to joining the AAG, Dr. Richardson founded and for 18 years was the president of GeoResearch, Inc., a private-sector scientific research company specializing in geographic research and technology, including geographic information science and systems (GIS), spatial modeling, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and environmental and natural resources issues.  GeoResearch developed and patented the world's first real-time interactive GPS/GIS mapping and data collection technology, leading to pervasive changes in the ways in which geographic information is collected, mapped, integrated, and used within geography, as well as in society at large.

The technologies and methods pioneered by GeoResearch are now at the heart of a wide array of real-time interactive mapping, navigation, geographic research and education, mobile computing, military operations, location-based business, and large-scale operations management applications of most major industries and governments. Richardson sold his company and its core patents in 1998. 

Richardson continues to conduct research and publish across multiple dimensions of geography, ranging from the GISciences to the GeoHumanities, and from Health Research to Environmental Science and Regulatory Programs.

Richardson holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and a PhD in Geography from Michigan State University. His current overarching research interests focus on geography's evolution as an international discipline and its future trajectories in the university and in society.

Mei-Po Kwan is Professor of Geography and Geographic Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received an MA degree in Urban Planning from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Geography from UC Santa Barbara. Her research interests include environmental health, neighborhood effects, access to healthcare, sustainable travel and cities, and application of geospatial technologies and GIS methods in health research. Kwan has received several prestigious research awards, including the 2005 Research Award from the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) and a Distinguished Scholarship Honors award from the Association of American Geographers in 2011. She has received about US$20 million support as PI or co-PI from various sources, including NSF and NIH. Her current collaborative projects examine the health risks of female sex workers, adolescent participation in high risk drug use, and tobacco cessation in Ohio smokers. Kwan is currently Editor of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. She is a charter member of the Community Influences on Health Behavior (CIHB) Study Section of NIH's Center for Scientific Review. Please visit her website for more information about her research interests and professional activities at http://meipokwan.org.

Julie Winkler is a Professor of Geography at Michigan State University. Her current research program focuses on impact assessments of regional climate change and the development, evaluation, and application of downscaled climate projections. She currently is the lead PI of the CLIMARK (Climate and Markets) Project, a NSF-funded effort that is using an example agricultural commodity to develop, evaluate, and apply a framework for incorporating spatial-temporal dynamics such as international trade into climate impact assessments for international market systems. She also is a co-investigator and a member of the core management team of the NOAA-funded Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments (GLISA) center. She previously was co-director of the EPA-funded Pileus Project that developed web-based decision support tools to incorporate climate change in the decision making process for the Great Lakes agriculture and tourism industries. Winkler is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and a recipient of the AMS Charles Franklin Brooks Award. She is the President-Elect of the Association of American Geographers Her presidential term begins in July 2013. More information can be found at https://www.msu.edu/~winkler/.