GISS-SGGeographic Information Science & Systems
Annual student competition

Student Honors Paper Competition.

An annual competition recognizing outstanding student research in GIS and GIScience. Undergraduate and graduate students present their work at the AAG Annual Meeting and compete for prizes and publication recognition.

2026 awardees

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First place

Qianheng Zhang

University of Wisconsin–Madison

“Spatial Epistemic Collapse: A Framework for Quantifying Spatial Bias in Generative GeoAI Using Street View Imagery”

2nd Place Student Honors 2026
Second place

Yifan Yang

Texas A&M University

“DamageArbiter: A Disagreement-driven Arbitration Framework for Hurricane Damage Assessment from Street-View Imagery”

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Third place

Yuhao Jia

Emory University

“A Unified Framework for Next-Gen Urban Forecasting via LLM-driven Dependency Retrieval and GeoTransformer”

About the award

The purpose of this competition is to promote scholarship and outstanding written and oral presentations by students in the field of GIScience. Any paper that advances an aspect of GIS, including theoretical, conceptual, and methodological developments, or innovative applications were welcome. Any paper that advances any aspect of GIS is welcome. We encourage papers on theoretical, conceptual, and methodological developments in GIS as well as on particular innovative GIS applications. Papers must be based upon original work, completed as an undergraduate or graduate student, relevant to the field of GIS and current GIS research. Papers must be mainly written by the applicant, but having co-authors is allowed. Students who are selected as finalists will be placed in a special session at the annual meeting. A single submission can only be submitted to one AAG special group honor paper competition.

Enhancing diversity, promoting inclusion, and broadening participation in the discipline of geography are goals that are central to the AAG and its mission. The GISS-SG strongly encourages female students and students in underrepresented groups in geography to participate in this competition.

2026 Student Honors Paper Competition

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Event details

  • Date: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
  • Location: Imperial B, Ballroom Level, Hilton, Tower 1, 2, 3 (San Francisco, California)
  • Format: Hybrid (In-person, Streamed, and Recorded)

Session agendas

Paper Competition I (2:30 PM – 3:50 PM PST)

PresenterUniversityPaper title
Tao PengUniversity of ConnecticutContextual Autoencoder: A Self-Supervised Learning Framework for Spatiotemporal Interpolation under Diverse Data Coverage Patterns
Andy QinThe University of Texas at AustinLeveraging Reinforcement Learning for Maternity Care Resource Reallocation
Junbo WangUniversity of TennesseeSounDiT: Geo-Contextual Soundscape-to-Landscape Generation
Meicheng XiongUniversity of Minnesota Twin CitiesA graph-based deep population downscaling model on irregular spatial units
Qianheng ZhangUniversity of Wisconsin–MadisonSpatial Epistemic Collapse: A Framework for Quantifying Spatial Bias in Generative GeoAI Using Street View Imagery

Paper Competition II (4:10 PM – 5:30 PM PST)

PresenterUniversityPaper title
Qian CaoUniversity of GeorgiaBenchmarking Generative Models for Environmental Visualization and Urban Planning Decision Support
Mahbub Ul HasanTexas A&M UniversityGlobal Assessment of Grasslands: Three Decades of Shifting Connectivity and Rising Fragmentation Across Regions and Scales
Yuhao JiaEmory UniversityA Unified Framework for Next-Gen Urban Forecasting via LLM-driven Dependency Retrieval and GeoTransformer
Xin JinThe Chinese University of Hong KongThe Utility Gap in Human Mobility Modeling: Evidence from Environmental Exposure Assessment
Yifan YangTexas A&M UniversityDamageArbiter: A Disagreement-driven Arbitration Framework for Hurricane Damage Assessment from Street-View Imagery

Recent announcements

Award

Announcing the 2026 GISS-SG Honors Competition Finalists

Mar 14, 2026

The Geographic Information Science and Systems Specialty Group is proud to announce the finalists for the 2026 Honors Competition for Student Papers! Join us at the AAG 2026 Annual Meeting on Tuesday, March 17, as 10 exceptional student scholars present…