We are pleased to announce the establishment of first Open Source Geospatial Research and Education (OSGeoREL) Laboratory in the United States at the Center for Earth Observation, North Carolina State University, Raleigh.  The laboratory is one of the founding members of a worldwide network developed under the auspices of the ICA-OSGeo MoU.

OSGeoREL at NCSU is led by Dr. Helena Mitasova and Dr. Laura Tateosian. The laboratory has an established program in graduate education in geospatial information science and technology using FOSS4G and extensive research in geospatial analysis, modeling and visualization with focus on natural resources.

Dr. Helena Mitasova is an Associate Professor at the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, OSGeo charter member since 2006, member of the OSGeo education and conference committees and Sol Katz award recipient  http://www.osgeo.org/solkatz
She has been actively involved in the GRASS GIS development since 1991 and together with Markus Neteler she has co-authored the first book about GRASS GIS.

Dr. Laura Tateosian is Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Earth Observation Her research interest focus is on visualization, human visual perception, computer graphics, geospatial sciences, non-photorealistic rendering, and human-computer interaction.
More details of the lab at http://gis.ncsu.edu/osgeorel/

For those of you attending the Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Symposium (OGRS 2012) http://www.ogrs2012.org/ later this month it will be good opportunity to also hear  Helena’s Keynote presentation  on “Building open source geospatial education at research universities”.