Penn State’s Department of Geography commemorated the 25th anniversary of its online geospatial education program with a symposium held in conjunction with the 2025 Esri User Conference in San Diego. Given the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in our work and rising concerns of how it may change the geospatial field, the event was aptly titled “Real Maps That Matter in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.” It featured speakers from city government, the private sector, non-profits, and academia to reflect on the evolution of geospatial education and its real-world impact. CSP data scientist, Mae Lacey, was invited to join this panel of alumni and Penn State professors to share her graduate school journey and how she applies spatial data science in her work at CSP, especially in the context of AI, specifically deep learning and machine learning. She highlighted recent work developing deep learning models to detect human land use features from satellite imagery and implementing machine learning models to estimate species distributions. These models integrate techniques in remote sensing, AI, and geospatial analysis that are central to the work of CSP’s Analytics Lab, which builds advanced models to inform conservation decision-making, and the Changing Landscapes Lab, which develops datasets and tools to track and visualize land-use change. The panel discussion underscored CSP’s role in bridging cutting-edge spatial science and applied conservation to deliver decision-ready data by harnessing the power of rapidly evolving tools like AI.
CSP Data Scientist, Mae Lacey, seated and third from right, fielding questions at the 2025 Esri User Conference in San Diego.