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Travis Gingras '06, a mathematics major and member of the club hockey team, has won the 2006 National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) Robert R. Churchill Memorial Prize for Student Scholarship in Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

Gingras' submission, which was his senior thesis and which he presented at the University's Festival of Science and the 2006 Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference, is titled "Application of a Geographical Information System to Ice Hockey Shots."

GIS are computer-based systems for the collection, management, display and analysis of geographical or spatial information. By examining game DVDs, Gingras was able to locate where each shot was taken on the rink and determine the outcome of the shot. These data were entered into a spatial database, or geodatabase, using GIS software. Gingras was then able to analyze shooting patterns during and between games, using spatial statistical techniques. These results have been compiled in a paper coauthored by Gingras with Burry Professor of Statistics Robin Lock, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics Michael Schuckers and Associate Men's Hockey Coach Chris Wells '92. The paper will be presented this summer in a "Sports and Statistics" session at a national statistics conference.

Gingras learned GIS through the University library's GIS Program, where he had been a GIS technician for three years.

More information: Gingras' Project on the St. Lawrence GIS site.

The award, from the GIS at NITLE Web site.

Posted: August 2, 2006