USGIF Accreditation
The Spatial Sciences Institute is an Academic Partner of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), the only organization of its kind aimed at bringing together the many disciplines involved in the geospatial intelligence sector to exchange ideas, share best practices and promote the education and importance of a national geospatial intelligence agenda.
The USGIF has accredited the USC B.S. in Human Security and Geospatial Intelligence, Graduate Certificate in Geospatial Intelligence and the M.S. in Human Security and Geospatial Intelligence.
Read more about the USGIF’s initial accreditation of the USC Spatial Sciences Institute academic programs in USGIF’s Trajectory magazine.
Tristan Pekron
Tristan Pekron (M.S. Human Security and Geospatial Intelligence ’23) received the $10,000 2022 Ken Miller Scholarship for Advanced Remote Sensing Applications, awarded to one master’s student working in or planning to enter the Defense/Intelligence workforce. Tristan’s research interests are in national security and environmental sustainability.
Being awarded the Ken Miller scholarship is extremely humbling. For me, it allows the continued pursuit of my geospatial education at USC. I am eager to leverage my interests, experience, and education in a meaningful way throughout a lifelong career. This past year has made me aware of the breadth and depth of GEOINT applications, and the innovation that is embodied by the community of practitioners. I hope to contribute to the field in a way that would make Ken Miller proud, discovering new possibilities and application domains, and continuing to push the envelope, as he and others have done.
Jacob Spear
When he received the 2022 USGIF graduate scholarship, Jacob Spear was a student in our M.S. Human Security and Geospatial Intelligence program, serving as an imagery analyst in the U.S. Marine Corps. His experience and interests in GEOINT revolve around the use of remote sensing and how GEOINT intersects with other intelligence disciplines. The USGIF scholarship allowed him to invest in educational resources as he was completing his degree and support his transition to serving in the intelligence community.
Kevin Mercy
SSI’s Kevin Mercy received the 2019 $10,000 Reinventing Geospatial Inc. (RGi) Scholarship for Geospatial and Engineering. An independent panel of GEOINT Community professionals undertook a multi-tiered review of the applications to select a recipient who is an undergraduate student who has an interest in both engineering and geospatial disciplines and also demonstrates financial need. This highly competitive scholarship provides $10,000 that can be used to support a variety of education and/or research expenses related to tuition, room and board, and certain school supplies, such as a computer purchase. Mercy is a co-author of the article “A Lightweight, Robust Exploitation System for Temporal Stacks of UAS Data: Use Case for Forward-Deployed Military or Emergency Responders,” published in March 2019 in Drones.
Jong Su Kim
SSI’s Jong Su Kim was awarded a 2019 $5,000 USGIF Graduate Scholarship, for education and/or research expenses. He is a co-author of “Detecting Village Burnings with High-Cadence SmallSats: a case-study in the Rakhine State of Myanmar,” published in April 2019 in Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment.
Courtney Fassett
Courtney Fassett received one of the 2016 Graduating High School Senior awards from Northwood High School in Irvine, California. She used 3D visualization technology to map the University of Southern California’s campus. She went on to be a B.S. in Geodesign graduate from the USC Spatial Sciences Institute.
Golden Ticket Awardees
The Spatial Sciences Institute has had three students selected for the honor of being named to the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) Golden Ticket, a program which supports young geospatial professionals in their professional development by sponsoring their attendance at the USGIF GEOINT Symposium and arranging for high-level introductions to industry leaders.
The three SSI Golden Ticket awardees are Elin Henningsson (M.S. in Human Security and Geospatial Intelligence ’19), Kevin Mercy (M.S. in Geographic Information Science and Technology ’19), and Richard Windisch (B.S. in GeoDesign ’18 ; M.S. in GIST ’19).
GEOINT Symposium Student Assistants
SSI students also have been selected in a competitive process by the USGIF to serve as student assistants at the GEOINT Symposium.
