August 30, 2007
Clark Labs Director Appointed Landry Chair
Worcester, Mass. - Clark University President John Bassett announces the appointment of Professor J. Ronald Eastman to the Jan and Larry Landry University Professorship for a three-year term commencing September 1
Professor Eastman has been at Clark University since 1981 and was promoted to Full Professor in 1994. He chaired the Graduate School of Geography from 1998 to 2002 and has been the Director of Clark Labs since 1991. His field of specialization, in which he is a world leader, is Geographic Information Science (GIS) and Remote Sensing. In 2003 he was recognized by the Association of American Geographers with the Distinguished Service Award and in 2007 received the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science research award given for "outstanding research contributions to geographic information science." Professor Eastman is also a highly regarded teacher and mentor for undergraduate and graduate students, President Bassett said.
Professor Eastman is best known as the developer of the IDRISI GIS software and as the Director of Clark Labs. IDRISI was developed as a low-cost GIS software for the research and policy community around the world. Professor Eastman wrote the original source code in the 1980s and then developed Clark Labs as a unit that has annual software sales of over $1 million. Over subsequent years, Eastman developed new generations of IDRISI, releasing in 2006 the Andes Edition (version 15.0). The software has won numerous awards. Clark Labs is now known as much for the research findings originating from the unit as for the software itself. Among the path-breaking contributions that Professor Eastman has made are a series of image time series analysis tools for the investigation of environmental trends and climate teleconnections such as El Nino. More recently, Clark Labs researchers have turned to using GIS and remote sensing to address issues of biodiversity associated with climate change. This work has drawn the attention of and major grant funding from such foundations as Conservation International, the Moore Foundation, and the Google Foundation.
"Ron's work is truly of international renown and has been transformative not just within the academy but in the international policy community and in communities around the world from Malawi to Nepal," President Bassett said. "This appointment will help highlight the path-breaking scholarship and creative work carried out by faculty across the whole University."
The Landry University Professorship is made possible by a generous gift from Larry Landry '71, M.B.A. '75 and his wife Jan. Larry Landry is a member and past chair of the Clark University Board of Trustees.
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