Dearly beloved, I write today of the passing of our own Nia Matsumoto.  She was with only with us since 2017, but she has now departed for a better place.  Well, it is debatable whether the private sector is a better place than lovely academia, but no doubt Nia is glad to have found gainful permanent employment following her graduation last May!  She was gracious enough to spend the first half of her summer with us, so we thought it would be only proper to send her off with a belated newsletter feature.

Nia, known to her friends at CURA as N-n-n-Nia (like the Chia pets jingle), recently earned her Bachelor of Science in GIS and Spatial Analysis, as well as a minor in Computer Information Science.  She hails from a big city - Chicago, IL - but loves that Ohio State is practically a city unto itself, with plenty to see and do around campus and the nearby areas.  During her time at CURA, Nia was a key contributor to our effort to create a network dataset that will facilitate context-aware pedestrian routing within buildings on the OSU campus.  For this project, Nia used ESRI tools to derive polyline data from 3D building models using a combination of geoprocessing operations and manual data editing.  She also provided GIS support for an OSU researcher interested in studying swine diseases.  When she is not wrangling points and polylines, Nia enjoys knitting, taking care of her garden and house plants, and hiking with her dog.  Before she left, Nia humored us by answering a few questions.  Here’s what she had to say:

What is your dream job?

My dream job would be a job that combines sustainability, GIS and the environment.

What map projection best describes your personality and why?

I would be the Waterman Butterfly projection, because I'm balanced and like to challenge the norm.

If you were showing a friend around Central Ohio for the first time, what time of year would you want them to come and what would you do with them?

Central Ohio is great in the late summer/early fall. It's still fairly warm, we experience quite a bit of foliage changing colors, there are plenty of festivals and activities, and as it gets closer to Thanksgiving, we have the Circleville Pumpkin Show!

If you could travel anywhere, where would you go (and why)?

I would choose Iceland because you can still see the northern lights there and I'd like to see them before they disappear.

We'd like to thank Nia for her work at CURA and wish her the best in her future endeavors!