Mapping the Future: GIS, AI & VR with Jonathan Van Dusen and Alex Smith

Join Waterloo Geomatics alumni Jonathan Van Dusen and Alex Smith from Esri Canada in a Coffee and Learn session. While they have taken different paths to get where they are today, they are both working on exciting GIS projects and research within Esri Canada’s Education and Research group. They will be discussing several GIS and AI-related projects they are working on as part of Esri Canada’s research collaborations, including an interactive demo of a Virtual Reality tool for urban design. You will also have an opportunity to ask questions about their work, Esri Canada, GIS careers, and anything else related.

Jonathan Van Dusen (BES ’15) is a Higher Education Specialist in the Education and Research group at Esri Canada. He develops learning resources and workshops for university and college students, provides assistance with app development and user-interface design for higher-education research projects, and leads training sessions at the annual Indigenous Mapping Workshop. Jonathan completed a Bachelor of Environmental Studies in Geomatics with a Computer Science minor at the University of Waterloo and also has a certificate in User Experience Design from the University of Toronto. A lifelong fan of maps, geography, and technology, Jonathan is passionate about combining these through GIS to help solve current social and environmental challenges, as well as designing technology appropriately to meet user needs.

Alex Smith (BES ’15) is a Spatial Data Scientist at Esri Canada. He focuses on managing the Esri Canada GIS Centres of Excellence, developing spatial data science resources and conducting research projects with a focus on GeoAI and computer vision. He first began working with ArcGIS products in high school but had a more formal introduction while studying Geomatics at the University of Waterloo. A fourth-year project led to a Master of Science degree focusing on the classification of land use and cover using machine learning techniques. Alex then went on to complete his PhD at Simon Fraser University, writing his thesis on agent-based modelling and spatial statistics in three-dimensional space plus time.

Spots are limited. If unable to attend, please email Vesti Powell