Graduate Program in Spatial Analysis

News Items From Previous Years

26 June 2012 – Congratulations to Lisa Ferrato, the first MSA student in a while to co-author an article that was published, while she is still completing her degree! The article on “Visualization of Lake Mead Surface Area Changes from 1972 to 2009” was led by MSA faculty members Dr. K.W. Forsythe, S.J. Swales, and D.M. Atkinson with a contribution from visiting student B. Schatz.

15 & 22 June 2012 – MSA faculty members Drs. A. Millward and S. Wang made the newspaper headlines recently. Dr. Millward’s research with MSA students on the economic benefits of urban trees was portrayed in the Toronto Star with the conclusion that “Money does grow on trees”. And Dr. Wang’s work was cited in the Globe and Mail with reference to “The rise and fall of the ethnic mall”.

12 June 2012 – MSA Program Director Dr. C. Rinner was awarded an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to study “Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for Place-Based Policy-Making: Evaluating Toronto's Neighbourhood Wellbeing Indices”. Future MSA students will be needed to contribute to this research at the intersection of Geographic Information Science and Urban Policy!

24 May 2012 – MSA admissions are being closed early this year. A few completed application files are still being assessed, but the program is nearly full for Fall 2012. If you were considering an application, please make sure to apply early for admission in Fall 2013. Program staff are available throughout the year to discuss your goals and perspectives.

14 May 2012 – Congratulations to MSA faculty member Dr. Sutama Ghosh, who is co-investigator and designated team leader on a 2012-2019 SSHRC Partnership Grant on “Neighbourhood inequality, diversity, and change: trends, processes, consequences, and policy options for Canada’s large Metropolitan areas”.

17 April 2012 – Dr. Tony Hernandez’ commitment to research on shopping centres was honoured with a 2012 International Council of Shopping Centers Researcher Award. Many MSA students have contributed to Tony’s research at Ryerson’s Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity.

23 March 2012 – Congratulations to Brad Carter, parttime MSA student, whose map on “Broken Windows & Violent Crime in Philadelphia” completed for the MSA cartography course won 2^nd place in the 2012 National Geographic Award in Mapping as well as a honorable mention in the 39th Annual Map Design Competition of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. A detailed version of Brad’s map is linked on the CartoNews blog.

16-18 March 2012 – The MSA program along with the Department of Geography and Student Association in Geographic Analysis are proud to host the first OpenStreetMap developer event held in Canada, the Toronto Hack Weekend March 2012

08 March 2012 – Steph Murphy (MSA ’11) was interviewed for the Women in GIS/Geomatics section of the GoGeomatics blog. Other MSAs may follow.

04 March 2012 – The International Journal of Ecology published Adrian Gawedzki’s (MSA ’11) research with Dr. Wayne Forsythe on anthracene and arsenic contamination within Buffalo River sediments.

24 Feb 2012 – Six MSA faculty members are participating in the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) this week. Three presentations are based on student research by Dan Boyko (MSA ‘10), Hong Chen and Mary Makar (MSA ‘11), and current MSA student Enia Dhoska.

26 Jan 2012 – Congratulations to Suzanne Kershaw (MSA ’10) and her MSA supervisor, Dr. Andrew Millward, on publishing the article entitled “A Spatio-Temporal Index for Heat Vulnerability Assessment” based on Suzanne’s major research paper.

20 Jan 2012 – Dr. Ken Jones, co-founder and major contributor to the MSA program, former Chair of Geography, and now Dean of Ryerson’s management school, received the 2012 Errol Aspevig Award for Outstanding Academic Leadership. Congratulations, Ken!

22 October 2011 - Four MSA Students from the 2011 class, I. Dragovic, A. Gawedzki, A. Kluke, and G. McCartney presented their research at the CAGONT conference together with their supervisors, Dr. W. Forsythe and Prof. S. Swales. Congratulations to Amy and Adrian on winning the two Masters-level awards in the Student Paper Competition!

20 October 2011 - At Ryerson's Fall Convocation, 24 MSA students graduated today! A great turn-out of 20 graduands were in attendance to receive congratulations on and off stage.  See this group photo taken in the Quad.

14 October 2011 - Another peer-reviewed journal publication resulted from MSA student research: "A Scalable GeoWeb Tool for Argumentation Mapping" by A. Sani (MSA "11) and MSA program director, Dr. C. Rinner.

21 June 2011 – The major research paper by Mushtaq Hussain (MSA ’10) was the basis for an article on “Toronto’s Urban Heat Island—Exploring the Relationship between Land Use and Surface Temperature”, published in the open access journal Remote Sensing.

12 May 2011 – A recent report on one-stop shopping trends co-authored by Chris Daniel (MSA '05) and Joe Aversa (MSA '10) of Ryerson’s Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity was portrayed in the campus news today.

19 Apr 2011 – We had another successful MSA Poster Day, at which the current MSA students presented their major research paper proposals. See this photo of the 2010/11 class and some of their advisors.

04 Apr 2011 – MSA program director Dr. Claus Rinner led the publication of an article about the Online Injury Atlas for Ontario, which was co-authored by Sean Marshall (MSA '05) and MSA faculty member Dr. Tony Hernandez, along with collaborators at St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto.

30 Mar 2011 – MSA program director Dr. Claus Rinner received a 5-year Discovery Grant for "Developing Spatially Explicit Methods to Enhance Geovisual Analytics and Decision Support" from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

01 Feb 2011 – MSA faculty member Dr. Lu Wang together with Deborah Roisman (MSA ’07) published an article in the Professional Geographer based on Deborah’s major research paper on spatial accessibility of immigrants to physicians.

30 Nov 2010 – 22 full-time MSA students have been placed for their Winter term practicum. The hosts range from Bell Mobility to the TRCA; Environics Analytics to the TDSB; and Canada Post to the Ministry of Environment, to name but a few examples.

20 Oct 2010 – Congratulations to the 17 MSA students who graduated in Fall Convocation today! A lunch reception was held at the Elephant & Castle pub.

16 Oct 2010 – Today, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the MSA program with a reception for alumni, students, faculty, staff, and friends.

16 Oct 2010 – Five recent graduates from the MSA program and one current MSA student presented their research at the annual meeting of the Ontario Division of the Canadian Association of Geographers (CAGONT 2010). See details on our new publications page.

20 Sept 2010 – MSA faculty member Dr. Wayne Forsythe together with Kamal Paudel (MSA '08) and Dr. Chris Marvin of the Canada Centre for Inland Waters published a peer-reviewed paper entitled “Geospatial Analysis of Zinc Contamination in Lake Ontario Sediments” in the Journal of Environmental Informatics.

10 Sept 2010 – Emily Anderson (MSA ’07) received a “highly commended” mention in the Emerald Literati Network’s Outstanding Paper Awards for an article on her MSA research on “Marketing the downtown through geographically enhanced consumer segmentation”, which was co-authored by CSCA fellow Dr. Chuck Chakrapani and faculty advisor Dr. Tony Hernandez.

28 July 2010 – Aaron Pothier’s ongoing MSA research with Dr. Andrew Millward on the urban forest on Ryerson’s campus was featured in the Ryerson news.

08 July  2010 – MSA faculty member Dr. Wayne Forsythe along with incoming MSA student Adrian Gawedzki and Peter Rodriguez (MSA '09) presented a peer-reviewed paper entitled "Assessing Sediment Contamination in the Buffalo River" at the 22nd Symposium for Applied Geographic Information Processing (AGIT 2010) in Salzburg, Austria.

09 June 2010 – Steven Farber (MSA ’04) is the first MSA graduate to complete a PhD. Congratulations to Steve on the successful defense of his thesis on “The Social Costs of Automobility” at McMaster University!

03 May 2010 - MSA student Mushtaq Hussain presented a poster on his team's fall term course project with the Ministry of the Environment at the Ontario Water Works Association (OWWA) conference in Windsor. On the same day, Mushtaq also sent his supervisor, MSA program director Dr. Claus Rinner, to the Urban Heat Island Summit in Toronto to present a poster on his major research paper project!

18 April 2010 - The annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) drew crowds to Washington DC, including six MSA faculty members, four MSA graduates, and a current MSA student: Suzanne Briggs.

01 April 2010 - Congratulations to MSA faculty members Dr. Harald Bauder and Dr. Tony Hernandez on their new SSHRC research grants, and to Dr. Andrew Millward and Christopher Greene (MSA '09) on their MITACS grant to support Chris' doctoral reasearch.

03 March 2010 - Today, MSA students met with Prof. John Robinson from the University of British Columbia to discuss environmental, urban, and campus sustainability. Dr. Robinson was visiting Ryerson to give a Trudeau lecture.

27 Jan 2010 – MSA graduate Sean Marshall has led the data analysis and mapping for a study that is reported in the National Post and the Toronto Star. The study on spatio-temporal patterns of urban violent injury was conducted at St. Michael's Hospital, a frequent practicum placement host for MSA students.

17 Oct 2009 – Three MSA students participated in the conference of the Canadian Association of Geographers, Ontario Division (CAGONT): Suzanne Briggs, Peter Rodriguez, and Jacqueline Young.

9 Oct 2009 – Dr. Tony Hernandez, director of the Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity and MSA faculty member, authored a new report on the increasing concentration in Canada's retail industry.

25 Sept 2009 – Congratulations to the 17 MSA students who completed their degree requirements on time for Fall convocation! This month, we also welcomed 24 new students.

29 May 2009 – MSA students Steven Chung, Aaron Sani, and Jacqueline Young met Geomatics graduate students from across Canada at the GEOIDE summer school in Vancouver. Their poster at the GEOIDE conference received the Delegate’s Choice award.

7 Feb 2009 – MSA program director and faculty member Dr. Claus Rinner and 2007 MSA alumna Bonnie Veno were featured in a Toronto Star article about the map-making renaissance fuelled by data and tools that are freely available on the Web.