Since the program's inception three years ago, GDIT has participated in Harris-Stowe State University’s GEOINT Summer Immersion Program in St. Louis. This experiential program was created by the university alongside the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to expose college students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) to the field of Geospatial Analysis and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This year it brought together 20 students from 13 different HBCUs for four weeks of learning, experimentation, networking, and presentations. Leaders from Maxar, ESRI, the Cortex Innovation Center (CIC), the St. Louis Development Corporation (SLDC) and Greater St. Louis Inc. also participated in the program with the shared goal of contributing to the growing geospatial ecosystem in the St. Louis area.
Simultaneous to learning about St. Louis’ robust geospatial ecosystem, students also learned GEOINT skills and tradecraft to apply to a project assigned by NGA. For the 2024 cohort, the students were asked to study Russian energy investment in several African countries. They were tasked with using a variety of open-source datasets to investigate what was happening in their assigned country, and why. When they arrived at GDIT during their third week of the program, we were focused on providing additional toolsets that would allow them to expand on work they had done the prior week. To facilitate this, we enlisted the help of one of our industry partners – HEAVY.AI, which offers a GPU-backed platform named Immerse. This browser-based, interactive data visualization client works seamlessly with HEAVY.AI’s server-side technologies, HeavyDB and HeavyRender. It uses an instantaneous cross-filtering method that creates a sense of being at "one with the data." The HEAVY.AI team flew in from Denver, CO to provide hands-on instruction to this year’s cohort and had several guest speakers to address the current and future state of geospatial analysis. This experience also included a Q&A session with their Co-founder and CTO, Mr. Todd Mostak.
We also introduced them to the concept of ML-Ops, the importance of finding and normalizing data, and more. We invited guest visitors from the Cortex Innovation Center which allowed the students to connect with entrepreneurs and innovators and showcase the growing geospatial ecosystem in St. Louis.
At the end of the program, students presented their results to an audience of geospatial leaders from the St. Louis area, the President of Harris-Stowe University, and the deputy director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
Why does all of this matter?
Firstly, the geospatial industry holds immense potential to shape the future, but its impact will only be fully realized if we can actively engage the next generation. The field of GEOINT today lacks diversity across its practitioners. The reasons the lack of diversity exists are manifold – but there are things we can do to change it. And we should. We need more people from different backgrounds, more perspectives and new lenses through which to solve problems. Programs like this provide access to a segment of the student population that can provide fresh viewpoints and perspectives.
Second, as new geospatial professionals enter the field, the tools available to them will be more sophisticated and have more capabilities than ever. That’s a good thing. However, knowing how to use them adds additional sharpness to the learning curve. Giving early access to cutting-edge tools and the opportunity to become proficient in them is huge. We were honored to be able to do that for this cohort.
Third, the participants in this year’s program came from a variety of majors beyond geospatial engineering – business, finance, and political science to name a few. They’ll take their geospatial experiences into their chosen fields, broadening the application for geospatial analysis and making them unique problem solvers. One participant even decided to change his major to geospatial engineering; it was thrilling to see someone have a life-changing experience during the month. This program is all about exposing new learners to geospatial analysis and data, and showcasing the career opportunities associated with it. And it’s working.
“Seeing the students immediately grasp the importance of geospatial data and the myriad ways to analyze it was really inspiring,” said Bob Deppisch, president, Public Sector LLC, from HEAVY.AI. “We know that tomorrow’s geospatial challenges are going to have to be solved with newer and more powerful solutions, and it was incredible to put a solution like ours into the heads of geospatial newcomers and to see what they were instantly able to accomplish.”
Empowering young leaders, supporting diverse groups, and using the latest technologies. That’s the goal. It’s why GDIT has been an active participant in the St. Louis geospatial community and intends to continue to be for a long time. We’re doing incredible things there – together – and look forward to doing much more.
