Hello everyone! My name is Audreana, and I am currently a GIS graduate student and the Centre of Geographic Sciences (COGS). Just last April I graduated from McMaster University with an Honours Bachelor of Science in Environmental Sciences as well as a concurrent certificate in GIS.
Starting my undergraduate degree during the pandemic, I did not always know that GIS was my passion. I started university as a Mathematics and Statistics student, though as my first semester progressed I realized I did not see a future for myself that involved pure mathematics. With this as a driving factor, I decided to change my major to Economics, Environment and Society, basing my decision on the economics courses that were required for my mathematics degree and the environmental science elective I previously took. In this next year, I recognized that I was most interested in the environmental science courses, which inspired me to make one final switch in my studies, and switch into McMaster’s Environmental Sciences major. This major involved the completion of an introductory GIS course, which was actually the course I was most nervous for as the upper year students openly expressed its difficulty. On the first day of that class, I quickly realized that GIS was something I was interested in. It combined many of my interests including the environment, problem-solving and analysis, and it was something brand new to me. For the rest of my undergraduate degree, I focused all my studies around GIS and pursued it in any course I could.
In my final year, I decided to make a last minute switch in my schedule to take a self guided research course. For my research I decided to incorporate some of the skills I was learning in a course I was taking at the time, as well as Esri products. My research resulted in building a custom geoprocessing tool using the arcbridge between ArcGIS Pro and R. This tool performed a Network Kernel Density Estimate (NKDE), and aimed to make this analysis more accessible to users that may not be well versed in R. This experience taught me a lot about problem-solving, professional communication as well as how to work with different software and make connections between them. This research granted me with the Esri Canada Higher Education Scholarship, something that has opened up opportunities for myself to further pursue GIS.
I have now taken my passion of GIS to Nova Scotia, and have been enjoying learning from different teachers and mentors, in a different environment. My main passions in GIS fall in network analyses, using different GIS softwares to make content available and easy to understand for other (ex. Dashboards) and using scripting softwares, primarily Python, to automate workflows and solve problems.
Outside of the GIS world I enjoy running, going to the beach with my dog Brynley, hiking, travelling and attending any and all concerts!
