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News Archive

14 November 2018 - GIS Day 2018 event in collaboration with Ryerson University Library and Archives and Esri Canada includes a presentation on big data in retail analytics by MSA faculty member Dr. Tony Hernandez and Joe Aversa, MSA ’10 and PhD cand. at Wilfred Laurier University. The Department of Geography and Environmental Studies will also participate in the City of Toronto’s GIS Day event on November 20th with a presentation of select MSA student work.

13 November 2018 - Thank you, Environics Analytics, for allowing 25 MSA students to present their cool cartography and geovisualization course projects at the 2018 EA User Conference!

11 October 2018 - Congratulations, MSA class of 2018 on today’s convocation ceremony!

11 June 2018 - MSA student Krystal Siebert presented her research on “Use of Wetland-to-Lake Hydrologic Connectivity Metrics to Better Understand Broad-Scale Patterns in Lake Dissolved Organic Carbon Concentrations” at 2018 meeting of the Canadian Geophysical Union.

1 June 2018 - At the 2018 meeting of the Canadian Cartographic Association (CCA), MSA student Melanie MacDonald reported on her course project on mapping informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya, using OpenStreetMap with an associated story map and some artwork too. Congrats, Melanie, on being selected for the CCA’s best student paper/presentation award at the conference!

17 May 2018 - Andy Charles, MSA '01, who served as Analyst and Retail Consultant at Scotiabank, and Sears Canada, and now is Senior Manager of Strategy, Analytics, and Insights at Loblaw Co, was profiled for Ryerson University’s 70/25-year anniversary. Andy was among the first eight Ryerson students to ever receive a graduate degree - see him cross the stage at Fall 2001 convocation at https://youtu.be/8N21ixucAbA (external link) 

3 May 2018 - At the MSA Poster Day, 19 students presented their major research paper or thesis research plans. The photo at https://twitter.com/RyersonGeo/status/992109214150602752 (external link)  shows faculty, staff, prospective MSA students, and industry representatives listening attentively to the student’s presentation across an extraordinary range of topics.

28 March 2018 - Sean Marshall, MSA ’05, spoke to an undergraduate Geographic Analysis class today about potential campus locations in Brampton. In addition to his day job as Geospatial Health Analyst, Sean blogs about urban transportation issues and is a contributing writer for Spacing Magazine and TVO.

14 March 2018 - Taking a daily dive into Data Lake… For International Women’s Day, Scotiabank’s Digital Factory profiled the work of Margaret Woo, MSA ’01, and Senior Manager, Applied Analytics at the bank.

2 March 2018 - Ryerson’s “Alumni of Grad Studies” series features a portrait of Amanda Maze, MSA '04, and Director of Spatial Strategy and Real Estate Insights at Walmart Canada. The Master of Spatial Analysis is one of Ryerson’s longest-running graduate degrees with extraordinary career opportunities in geography, GIS, retail, marketing, banking, and real estate.

10 February 2018 - New article by a group of MSA faculty and students: K. Wayne Forsythe et al., “Assessing fine particulate matter concentrations and trends in southern Ontario, Canada, 2003-2012.” Get your open access copy at  (PDF file) https://www.aimspress.com/fileOther/PDF/environmental/environ-05-00035.pdf (external link) 

2 February 2018 - Ryerson Today article on “Why your geography degree will get you a job”, highlighting the transferable skills acquired in the MSA program: “From retail to crime analytics to public health, geography is in high demand”, citing the experience of MSA alumni Heather Hart and Joe Aversa.

23 November 2017 - Celebrating the Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity's (CSCA) 25th anniversary with an evening event around Canadian retail, real estate, and consumer behaviour trends. The CSCA is a founding partner of the MSA program and has hosted numerous MSA student research projects.

13 November 2017 - GIS Day event in the MSA lab. Students presented their completed Geovisualization projects, ranging from interactive and animated maps to 3D prints and other physical models.

19 October 2017 - The annual MSA practicum host reception showcases experiential learning at its best. Quotes from placement hosts overheard at the reception: MSA students make “maps that really change the conversation” about city planning and are “fully involved in our work group”, not just given a project to go off with. In other organizations, MSA students use GIS to help estimate mortgage risk, and employ location intelligence in environmental conservation. In retail network planning, MSA students consult on store cannibalization. As information designers at a major consultancy, MSA students will contribute to turning analytics into actionable decisions. MSA placement students will also participate in addressing police accountability and cost using geospatial data analysis. There even was a bit of competition between hosts about which is the coolest placement in conservation!

12 October 2017 - Congratulations, Master of Spatial Analysis (MSA) class of 2017 @RyersonU! Eggy, the mascot, likes #Geography #GIS and #WomenInAnalytics, see our tweet at https://twitter.com/RyersonGeo/status/918633759443910656 (external link) .

16 June 2017 - Congratulations to Daniel Liadsky (MSA 2015) and Dr. Brian Ceh who recently published a paper entitled “The interaction between individual, social and environmental factors and their influence on dietary intake among adults in Toronto” in the journal Transactions in GIS.

09 May 2017 - This is the 4th story based on the CAP project (external link)  following the reports by the Toronto Star (external link) Ryerson Today, the City Building Bulletin (April issue) by Ryerson City Building Institute.

Upcoming Event: The annual MSA Poster Day event will be held on Thursday, May 4th, 2017. Please see poster for additional information.

18 April 2017 - Congratulations to Joseph Ariwi, Gabby Lee, Ela Lichtblau, Gary Moloney for their work from the GIS Project Management course in Fall 2016 profiled on Ryerson Today on Apr 13th, 2017, in a story entitled “Students and police work together- Ryerson geography students develop mental health app with Toronto Police Service”! In this project, the group applied their skills in data handling, spatial analytics, web GIS, statistical modeling and critical social analysis, to develop the Community Asset Portal (CAP), which is a partnership between Ryerson, TPS, the City of Toronto, and Find Help/211 that seeks to create an efficient, map-based system for practical front-line use. The project continued after the course through placement for Gabby and a part time summer position for Joseph.  

21 February 2017 - Congratulations to Joseph Ariwi's success with two 2nd prizes at YSGS's "Why Ryerson?" and "My Voice, Our Future" contests!

The first contest was for a 20-word statement explaining why the student chose Ryerson for their graduate education: 2nd Place: Joseph Ariwi, Spatial Analysis MSA "I chose Ryerson for my graduate education because of the depth of expertise and diversity of culture found on campus."

The second contest was for a 1-minute video (external link)  on who they are and where they are headed after Ryerson: 2nd Place: Joseph Ariwi, Spatial Analysis MSA (external link) .

 

16 November 2016 - We had a successful 15-year MSA Reunion that took place concurrently with the EA user conference reception and a GIS Day-themed display of geovisualization projects from the MSA cartography course on Nov 16, 2016! Many thanks for the enormous support provided by Environics Analytics! Environics Analytics founder and president, @statslady (external link)  Jan Kestle, is quoted with identifying "Geography as the secret sauce" that integrates data for advanced analytics. The Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Ryerson University received shout-outs and accolades for training the next generation of data analysts through its BA in Geographic Analysis and MSA in Spatial Analysis programs. See an event report from Dr. Claus Rinner (https://storify.com/ClausRinner/geography-the-secret-sauce-of-data-analytics (external link) ))

15 October 2015 - Congratulations to Daniel Liadsky (MSA class 2014-2015) who was awarded the Ryerson Gold Medal, University's highest honour, at the Fall Convocation Ceremony on Oct 15, 2015. This award is presented to one student from each Faculty. Daniel was the only student from the Faculty of Arts who was selected for this highly competitive award. The award recognizes Daniel’s outstanding academic achievement and research in food geography using geographic and statistical methods, combined with his outstanding community and professional involvement with the Canadian Urban Institute and other community and non-profit organizations using GIS, geo-visualization and geo-computation approaches.

1 September 2015 – Welcome to 21 new MSA students, coming to us from Carleton, Cornell, Lakehead, Laurentian, McGill, Queen’s, Toronto, Victoria, and of course Ryerson undergraduate (and graduate) degrees!

26 August 2015 – Project proposals by MSA faculty members Dr. Claire Oswald, Dr. Richard Shaker, and Dr. Andrew Millward were funded by “RECODE at Ryerson University”, showcasing our Department’s leadership in social innovation. See the RECODE initiative’s blog post (external link)  for details.

1 June 2015 – Five MSA students participate in the Canadian Association of Geographers’ conference in Vancouver starting today: Christine Valancius, Alexis Robinson, Vadim Sabetski, Shannon Strelioff, and Kaylin Chin. See Dr. Forsythe’s blog post for details.

21 April 2015 – MSA students Daniel Liadsky, Vadim Sabetski, and Heather Hart present at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Chicago this week, along with numerous MSA faculty members and several MSA alumni. See Dr. Rinner’s blog post for details.

15 March 2015 – Alumni news: Adam McKay (MSA ’13) is volunteering on a URISA GISCorps (external link)  mission. From March to May, he teaches GIS & Remote Sensing at Kabale University in south western Uganda.

6 February 2015 – We are in the process of updating the MSA publication list. This includes three peer-reviewed, international journal articles by Travis Tormala (MSA ‘10), Andrew Chung-Da Lee (MSA ‘11), and Brad Carter (MSA ‘12) with their respective supervisors, spanning topics from geospatial access to health care to neighbourhood change and development of novel decision support techniques in GIS.

12 January 2015 – This week, 23 MSA students have their first day on their practicum. The hosts for these valuable work placements include different units within the cities of Toronto and Vaughan, three provincial ministries, two conservation authorities, a major bank, a GIS developer and a geospatial data vendor, a real-estate developer, an engineering consultancy, two hospitals, two business analytics firms, two police services, a research institute, and a non-profit community group.

16 December 2014 – Congratulations to Christopher Greene (MSA ’09), who won one of Ryerson’s prestigious 2015 Dean’s Teaching Awards! Chris teaches in the Department’s Environment and Urban Sustainability and Geographic Analysis programs, while completing his PhD in Environmental Applied Science and Management. Ryerson’s 2015 Award Recipients also include MSA faculty members Dr. Andrew Millward (Social Innovation and Action Research Award) and Dr. Eric Vaz and Dr. Marcus Escobar-Anel (Dean’s SRC (Research) Awards).

16 October 2014 – Best wishes to the 20 MSA graduates of the class of 2014, shown in this photo from fall convocation.

25 September 2014 – MSA professor Andrew Millward turns parks into classrooms using a mobile app with information on the urban forest. Several MSA students contributed to this research, including Greg Bowie (MSA ’11), who is mentioned in this article.

26 August 2014 – The Department of Geography and Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity are welcoming a new class of 25 MSA candidates. The students come to us from universities in Southern Ontario, including Guelph, Queen’s, Ryerson, Toronto, Waterloo, and Western, and as far as Concordia (QC), Bucknell (US), Concepcion (CL), Bucharest (RO), and Auckland (NZ)!

26-30 May 2014 – MSA student research presented at Canadian Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (external link)  at Brock University includes Heather Hart on statistical bias of geographic scale in environmental inequity and Rajiv Lalla on geographic distribution of HIV/AIDS in Thailand, both with supervisor Dr. Peter Kedron. Other presentations were given by MSA alumni as well as faculty members.

7-12 April 2014 – Four current MSA students and at least three MSA alumni are presenting at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in Tampa, Florida. See Dr. Rinner’s GIS blog for details on all presentations by Geography department members.

16 March 2014 – Toronto’s Chief Planner tweeted about “Open data leads to new expressions of our beautiful city” referring to a map made by MSA student William Davis. William’s “map of every traffic signal in Toronto” was also featured in blogTO (external link)  and commented on in another 100+ tweets.

04 March 2014 – MSA faculty member Dr. Wayne Forsythe and his former student Grant McCartney (MSA ’11) published their research on “Investigating Forest Disturbance Using Landsat Data in the Nagagamisis Central Plateau, Ontario, Canada (external link) ” in the Open Access journal ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information.

25 February 2014 – Alumni news: Kamal Paudel (MSA ’08) was cited in the  (PDF file) Fall 2013 issue of ArcNorth News (external link)  about the use of location analytics in conservation (p.17). The issue includes references to GIS applications across the business, environmental, and social/health fields of study available in the MSA program.

26 January 2014 – Alumni news: Congratulations to Stephen Young (MSA ’11) on his promotion to McDonald’s Canada’s national Director, Corporate Support Services & Spatial Research! Stephen’s geoanalytics team at McD also employs three other MSA grads.

25 November 2013 – Two inaugural Master of Spatial Analysis (MSA) Awards of Distinction were presented to Mary Grunstra and Adam McKay (MSA ’13) at the Department of Geography’s awards night. Click here for snapshot from the event.

03 July 2013 – Four students with MSA links and two MSA professors presented their research results at parallel conferences in Salzburg, Austria! Prof. S. Swales, incoming MSA student Colleen Middleton, and Prof. W. Forsythe presented "The Use of Geographic Information System (GIS) Analysis to Delimit a Protected Area for Old-growth Red Pine Forest in Wolf Lake, Temagami, Ontario, Canada" at the GI_Forum (external link)  Symposium. In addition, Prof. W. Forsythe, Chris Marvin (Canada Centre for Inland Waters), current MSA student Cameron Hare, Joseph Aversa (MSA '10), Prof. Swales, Elfriede Eder (Franziskanergymnasium, Bozen, Italy) and Adrian Gawedzki (MSA '11) presented "Geovisualization of Arsenic in Lake Erie Sediments" at the 25th Applied Geographic Information Processing (external link)  Symposium.

31 May 2013 – New major research projects by MSA faculty members! Drs. C. Rinner and P. Robinson are co-applicants on a Canada-wide, five-year SSHRC Partnership Grant. This funding will help support future MSA student research addressing the partnership’s central question of “How the geospatial web 2.0 is reshaping government-citizen interactions”. In addition, Dr. H. Bauder leads a three-year SSHRC Partnership Development Grant on “Integration trajectories of immigrant families”, in which Drs. S. Ghosh, T. Hernandez, and S. Wang are among the co-applicants.

22 May 2013 – Congratulations to Adrian Gawedzki (MSA '11) and Peter Rodriguez (MSA '09) for their article on “Geospatial Estimation of Mercury Contamination in Buffalo River Sediments (external link) ” which was led by MSA faculty member Dr. Wayne Forsythe with colleagues Kim Irvine and Mary Perrelli from Buffalo State.

20 March 2013 – Alumni news: Congratulations to GIS Analyst Manoj Dangwal (MSA ’04) on winning a 2012 Employee Excellence Award at Allstate Insurance Company of Canada.

26 February 2013 – She did it again! Second peer-reviewed journal article by Lisa-Jen Ferrato (MSA ’12) on her research “Comparing Hyperspectral and Multispectral Imagery for Land Classification of the Lower Don River, Toronto (external link) ” with supervisor Dr. Wayne Forsythe.

21 February 2013 – MSA program director Dr. Shuguang Wang led the publication of an article on “Recent Trends of Ethnic Chinese Retailing in Metropolitan Toronto (external link) ”, which is partially based on Jason Zhong’s (MSA ’09) major research paper on “Delineating Ethnoburbs”.

15 February 2013 – Congratulations to MSA faculty member Dr. Doug Banting, who is part of a team that won a major research contract from the City of Toronto to develop “GIS-Based Hydrologic and Hydraulic Models for Combined-Sewer-System Management”. The Ryerson team will help the City to comply with new federal wastewater systems effluent regulations.

20 December 2012 – Congratulations to MSA faculty members Dr. Wayne Forsythe and Dr. Claus Rinner: Wayne received a 2012/13 Faculty Service Award for exceptional contributions to the Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts, Ryerson University, and the profession of Geography. He currently serves as Vice President of the Canadian Association of Geographers - Ontario Division (CAGONT). Claus received a 2012/13 Faculty SRC Award for outstanding achievements in scholarly, research, and creative activities. His research program and publication record is driven by MSA student research.

01 November 2012 – Emily Hazell (MSA ’12) gave an invited presentation on “Geographic variation and clustering of gastroschisis in Canada, 2005-2010” at the Canadian Congenital Anomalies Surveillance Network conference. This work was the outcome of Emily’s MSA Practicum in the Maternal-Infant Care Research Centre at Mount Sinai Hospital.

13 October 2012 – Four 2012 MSA graduates supervised by Professors Forsythe and Swales presented their research at the CAGONT conference (external link)  this weekend. The work by L. Ferrato, J. Floroff, C. Krnic, and M. Wilson ranged from thermal energy site selection to land cover classification, fire modeling, and the analysis of river sediment contamination. And for the second year in a row, the CAGONT Master’s Research Paper award went to an MSA: Congratulations to Lisa Ferrato on her winning paper on “Comparing Hyperspectral and Multispectral Imagery for Land Cover Classification of the Lower Don River, Toronto”!

10 September 2012 – We are welcoming 24 new MSA students from a variety of education, career, and life paths into the program. We are looking forward to an exciting year of learning and collaboration. At the same time, 16 out of 17 fulltime and 2 out of 3 second-year parttime students have defended their major research papers and are working on their final revisions. Best of luck with your future endeavours!

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 (external link) ” 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 (external link) ”. And Dr. Wang’s work was cited in the Globe and Mail with reference to “The rise and fall of the ethnic mall (external link) ”.

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  (PDF file) 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 2nd place in the 2012 National Geographic Award in Mapping (external link)  as well as a honorable mention in the 39th Annual Map Design Competition of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. A detailed version of  (PDF file) Brad’s map (external link)  is linked on the CartoNews blog (external link) .

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 (external link) 

08 March 2012 – Steph Murphy (MSA ’11) was interviewed for the Women in GIS/Geomatics (external link)  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 (external link) .

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 (external link) ” 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 (external link)  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  (image file) 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 (external link) " 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” (external link) , 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  (image file) 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 (external link) , 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. (external link) 

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” (external link)  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” (external link) , 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) (external link)  conference in Windsor. On the same day, Mushtaq also sent his supervisor, MSA program director Dr. Claus Rinner, to the Urban Heat Island Summit (external link)  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) (external link) 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 (external link)  and the Toronto Star (external link) . 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 (external link) ): 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 (external link)  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 (external link)  about the map-making renaissance fuelled by data and tools that are freely available on the Web.