Hello everyone, I am proud to announce the University of Waterloo ECCE group from this year.

My name is Weronika Fydrych (she/her) and I’m happy to be a part of the University of Waterloo’s ECCE student association. I am currently finishing up my final year in the School of Planning with a specialization in GIS. During my co-ops, I’ve had the opportunity to apply GIS to various planning themes in the Region of Peel, such as building permits, home-bound vaccination routes, and mapping and visualizing various municipal and regional assets. After my undergraduate degree, I intend on pursuing a Masters of Environmental Studies to continue exploring the relationship between urban planning and GIS academically. My other associates include Gagandeep Singh, Ben Woodward, Belle Tuen, and Justin Lo:

“My name is Gagandeep Singh (he/him), and I am in my 4th year of the Honours Geomatics program here at UWaterloo. It’s an absolute pleasure to be a part of the ECCE Student Association this year. I’ve just finished my 4A term and am preparing to join Environment and Climate Change Canada in a wildlife position this upcoming fall. I’ve previously worked in sections such as wastewater, highway management and energy in more provincial roles, so I am extremely excited to be gaining a new experience. Looking forward I hope to continue to expand my interest in web-based GIS. Aiming to make it accessible, widely integrated and generally improve the transition from static to dynamic services. My goals as an associate this year are to explore the prior mentioned relationships and learn more about innovating GIS techniques.”

“My name is Ben Woodward (he/him), I am in my third year of a double major in Geography and Earth Sciences, and I am thrilled to be part of UW’s ECCE student association this year. My biggest interests lie in historical GIS (HGIS) and GIS education. Over the pandemic, I began teaching myself the fundamentals of web development and mapping using both Esri and open source software. Last summer, I worked with my local museum in Bayfield Ontario to build the Bayfield Historical Web Map (www.bayfieldhistoricalwebmap.ca), which allows locals and visitors to explore the town’s historic photographs, postcards, and paper maps. This fall, I will be starting a co-op with the Decima project (https://decima-map.net/) to help them recreate medieval Florence using GIS. Regarding GIS education, I co-founded the Canadian Geography Workshop Series (www.geoworkshops.ca) which offers free geography and GIS workshops to high school students, especially those interested in competing in the International Geography Olympiad. Additionally, I run March break and summer intro to GIS workshops with Skills Ontario. As a student associate, I am hoping to gain a stronger knowledge of emerging GIS technologies to apply to my HGIS work and share with future geography and GIS enthusiasts.”

“Hey everyone, I’m Belle and im in my final year of geomatics! I’ll be specializing in Climate Change and completing my computing minor this year! In my previous coops I have created client based toolboxes within ArcGIS pro and ArcMap using python and arcpy. I also created Geomatics based labs for high school students to spread GIS knowledge! My favorite project so far was during my GIS project course where we created a forest fire spread model using arcpy and researched the effects of road break mitigation on forest fires. “

“Hi, my name is Justin Lo and I’m happy to be part of the University of Waterloo’s ECCE student association. I am currently in my third year of Geomatics, with a minor in Computing. During my co-op work terms, I’ve had the opportunity to apply the skills I’ve gained through my academics to develop apps using ESRI software. I’ve also had the opportunity to develop scripts in various programming languages such as R, Python, and JavaScript. As a student associate, I hope to gain more experience with the suite of apps ESRI provides and use that experience to further my understanding of GIS.”