New Zealand Esri Young Scholar Award 2023 – Winner

As the winner of the 2023 New Zealand Esri Young Scholar Award, Rachel Lawson, recent graduate of the University of Auckland, will be winging her way to San Diego to attend the Esri Education Summit and Esri User Conference in July 2023.

Rachel's award-winning project "Measuring disruption to human mobility and exposure to air pollution following the New Zealand International Convention Centre Fire" identified disruptions to movement corridors, exposure to smoke / air pollution, and emergency and citizen response during and after the event in Auckland, New Zealand in 2019. The judges were particularly impressed with the innovative use of ArcGIS to map social media posts.

At Esri User Conference 2023 Rachel will get to display her project poster in the Map Gallery, in front of thousands of worldwide ArcGIS users and to meet Jack Dangermond in person at the Special Achievement Award Ceremony.

We will make Rachel’s poster available for you to view post Esri User Conference. Hopefully, we will also be able to hear Rachel's reflections on the summit and conference once she returns.

The judges would like to highly commend Dylan Pollard, from the University of Otago, as the runner up for the New Zealand Esri Young Scholar Award 2023. Dylan’s project looked at the use of GIS in pest management in West Harbour, Dunedin. As runner up to this award Dylan will receive a complimentary registration to the New Zealand Esri User Conference in Auckland 2023.

Thank you to all the other young scholars who applied for the New Zealand Esri Young Scholar Award in 2023. Your submissions were of the highest standard and made the judge’s job in choosing the best project very difficult.