2 Awards in 2 months
So we are coming to the end of the first 31 days of 2012 and I’m pleased to report that I’ve won 2 separate awards for my research at UCL.
The first award, which I won this week, was the UCL Provost’s Award for Public Engagement 2012.
This award was really unexpected and I still can’t quite believe I’ve won it. The Award panel said:
“The selection panel was impressed with Steve’s leadership of, and commitment to, several really innovative projects. It was clear that Steve’s understanding of the needs of people outside UCL, not to mention his own high standards of work, are central to the success of the projects he has been involved in, and that he has been a fantastic example to colleagues at UCL.”
Wow what a write up! I need to say thanks to a few people who have encouraged me through theses projects. Firstly I need to say thanks to my supervisor and boss, Andy Hudson-Smith (@digitalurban) who has given me the encouragement I needed to do yet another cool project. Thanks to Martin Zaltz Austwick for being an ace co-presenter on the awesome Global Lab Podcast and finally to my girlfriend Helen who has had to put up with my geeky chat and late night coding sessions.
The second award is the JISC Geo-developers of the Year 2012 for GEMMA (Geospatial Engine for Mass Mapping Applications).
In 6 months we developed a mapping platform, iPhone application and Chrome plugin which opens up a small subset of the complex world of geovisualisation to everyone through a little gerbil named Gemma. JISC were impressed with amount of code that made GEMMA so simple to use and transparent. Even though we didn’t take home the best project award, which went to Nature Locator incidentally, I feel that this was the best award to take away on the night.
So what’s in store for the next 11 months? Well hopefully more of the same. Development of BigDataToolkit has started and should have its first application by the end of February and we will have some more cool projects lined up in 6 months so stayed tuned.