Alan MacEachren

Alan MacEachren was Director of the GeoVISTA Center from its formation in 1998 through 2020. GeoVISTA evolved over that time from a Center focused on geovisualization to a broad-based interdisciplinary geographical information science center conducting and coordinating innovative research in GIScience, covering a broad range of domains from spatial cognition, through formal geo-information representation, to spatial analysis, cartography and visual analytics.

MacEachren’s own research roots are in cartography and spatial cognition. His research interests over time covered a wide spectrum of GIScience topics. These include: geovisual analytics, geovisualization and exploratory spatial data analysis, geosemantics and geographical information retrieval, and place and big data. Applications domains to which his research connects include public health, crisis management, and environmental science. As Emeritus, he continues to pursue research, with a particular emphasis on cartographic/visualization topics.

Since retiring and moving to Emeritus status, MacEachren has balanced research interests with his long-time avocation of birding, completing a birding quest in 2021 detailed in A Geo-Big Year: Pandemic Retirement is for the Birds, Osprey View Press, 2022.