The University of Texas at Dallas
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Harini Sridharan MS’09 PhD’12

Home: Knoxville, Tennessee

UT Dallas Degree: Ph.D.’12, GISC and MS’09 MGIS 
Profession: Post-Doctoral Researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

UT Dallas Achievements

I received teaching and research assistantships all through my years at UT Dallas. It gave me so much work experience and the fee waiver helped me focus on growing my potentials without worrying about anything else.

My Work

In my current position as a researcher, my efforts are on developing advanced computational techniques for understanding, analyzing and extracting intelligent information from large-volume of complex geospatial data. My committed research has been pivotal in supporting and advancing my organization’s mission on handling and processing large-scale geospatial data for critical infrastructure maintenance, national security planning and understanding population dynamics.

Honors/accolades, additional degrees received, and/or previous work/positions held

I was recognized by DigitalGlobe as one of the top 15 researches among 500+ proposals from 79 countries for the DigitalGlobe 8-Band Research Challenge for the paper titled “Multi-level urban forest classification using the WorldView-2 8-Band Hyperspatial imagery.” This was during my PhD years at UTD. I have received several awards and scholarships from highly recognized professional organizations while pursuing my PhD. In 2013, I received the Early Career Award in Remote Sensing by Remote Sensing Specialty Group, American Association of Geographer. In May 2014, my research was ranked 4th worldwide in the IEEE GRSS Data Fusion Contest for developing innovative classification algorithm for thematic mapping using a fusion of high resolution thermal data and high resolution optical imagery.

The Value of My Degree

I was chosen for this particular position based on a conference presentation I did while studying at UT Dallas. My degree and research at UT Dallas was critical in helping me to obtain this position. I was given broad freedom to conduct my research that helped me shape my career in remote sensing.

The faculty members at UT Dallas encouraged me and guided me in every step of the way. During the five years, they treated me like family. For foreign students like me staying very far away from home, this is a very important factor. Also, EPPS provided me the complete freedom in pursuing my research and provided me all necessary resources for the same. When I and a couple of my friends expressed our interests in organizing the first GIS student club, EPPS was fully supportive and provided the necessary financial aid. That kind of all-rounded support is what helped me shape myself into the person I am today.

Advice for EPPS Students

Make complete use of what EPPS has to offer and see how the outside world offers you the opportunity to excel.