The Virginia Tech Office for GIS and Remote Sensing Research 2025 Symposium

Presentation Title: Practical examples of reality capture and machine learning and the application of the technologies to AEC firms

Bret Whiteley  was born in Canada, raised in South Africa, and currently residing in Charlottesville, Virginia, Bret's diverse upbringing has shaped his perspective and given him a unique cultural background. Exploration travel was an important part of his childhood, fostering his love of geography from an early age.

He has over 20 years of experience in working with geographic information system (GIS) and global positioning system (GPS) data and their application to environmental consulting, water resources, utility management, and land planning. An example of his project experience includes serving as a geospatial lead for a Newfoundland-World Energy Consortium project. Bret's background in geospatial technology played a crucial role in identifying analytical techniques to extract patterns in the data, leading to increased understanding of relationships to support sustainable design.

Josh Sexton is a certified Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) remote pilot for small unmanned aerial systems who has seen firsthand how applying this technology benefits a project, especially in the field of data collection. Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have broad application on projects that deliver on data.

His background in traditional data collection methods allows him to leverage UAS platforms. He actively promotes UAS as a valuable tool for project visioning, community engagement, and design. As a reality capture technology manager, he has seen how this platform enhances efficiency and reduces costs in large area assessments. He understands that by implementing cutting-edge technology, we can improve data precision, repeatability, and accessibility for field-collected information. He believes that by collaborating among our teams, this technology allows us to take full advantage of our shared expertise.

Presentation Title: Generative AI: Opportunities and Challenges for GIScience Research and Education

Junghwan Kim, Ph.D., M.U.P., is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Virginia Tech and a director of Smart Cities for Good, a research group that aims to solve urban social and environmental challenges through smart city technologies. 

Dr. Kim’s research program examines human mobility, transit accessibility, environmental exposure, and geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI). He is particularly interested in integrating GeoAI with geospatial data science to advance urban planning and transportation research. His lab develops and applies innovative geospatial methods, including space-time modeling, GeoAI, and travel behavior analysis, to better understand how human mobility shapes exposure to environmental factors (e.g., air pollution, green spaces) and access to health-promoting environments (e.g., healthcare facilities). Beyond methodological advancements, his research outcomes aim to inform urban planning strategies to promote the well-being of the population, public health, and economic development and innovation of cities. 

Dr. Kim has published more than 40 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals, including Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Journal of Transport Geography, JAMA Network Open, Communications Earth & Environment, Cartography and Geographic Information Science, Telematics and Informatics, Environmental Research, Science of the Total Environment, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, and Travel Behaviour and Society. His contributions have been recognized with awards from the American Association of Geographers (AAG), including the Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group Peter Gould Award, the AAG Council Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award, and the John Odland Award from the AAG Spatial Analysis and Modeling Specialty Group. He has also received honors from the American Planning Association (APA), including the Transportation Planning Division Student Paper Award (Third Prize) and the APA National Smart Cities Student Design Competition (Team Winner), as well as a Student Paper Award from the Korean-American Association for Geospatial and Environmental Sciences (KAGES).

Presentation Title: GIS and remote sensing for conservation 

Dr. Nuñez-Penichet is a quantitative ecologist working as presidential postdoctoral fellow at the Fish and Wildlife Conservation department and the Invasive Species Collaborative at Virginia Tech. Her research interests include diverse questions in distributional ecology, invasive species, dispersal ecology, and biodiversity patterns. At Virginia Tech, in collaboration with the Invasive Species Collaborative (ISC), Claudia is applying ecological modeling and simulation methods to investigate areas in Virginia that can be susceptible to the invasion of fleshy-fruiting plants and their native and invasive dispersers, which is instrumental for the implementation of early actions to prevent, monitor, and mitigate the effects from invasive plant species in the state.

Claudia was a postdoc at the University of Kansas, where she also received her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. She received her master's and bachelor's degree from Havana University (Cuba). Her past research projects focused on understanding invasive species, their potential distributions and invasion pathways, as well as potential effects of such species on native and cultivated taxa. She has used several methods and techniques to investigate the ecology and migratory patterns of Urania moths. Her experience with data analysis and programming has allowed her to work on diverse biogeographic, ecological, and evolutionary questions, with tools drawn from ecological modeling, simulation, and big-data challenges.

Presentation Title: A review of current geospatial support services provided by Virginia Tech Enterprise GIS 

Seth Peery is Senior GIS Architect in the Enterprise Systems unit of the Virginia Tech Division of Information Technology.

Seth manages the technology stack supporting the scalable storage, sharing, and dissemination of GIS data, maps and apps - so that you don't have to. The value proposition of his small but dedicated unit is to lower barriers to the use of GIS at an institutional scale, make faculty more competitive in their research, embrace geospatial methodologies in teaching and learning across the disciplines, further the outreach missions of the university, and improve its internal operations. 

His team supports GIS server infrastructure, integration between GIS and other enterprise information systems, application development and advanced spatial analysis. From ArcIMS to ArcGIS Online, from the datacenter to the cloud, he has evolved the campus's GIS infrastructure in concert with the waves of innovation in computing over time that are then applied towards geospatial problems. He represents the university through the ESRI Innovation Program, and works to keep Virginia Tech at the forefront of the geospatial state of the art within our peer institutions.