Looking Back on CGA’s 20th Anniversary Conference

by Jeff Blossom

Originally posted on the CGA website

The Center for Geographic Analysis celebrated its 20th anniversary this year with a special annual conference, “Celebrating Geographic Analysis: Past, Present, and Future.” The conference, which attracted 180 participants, was held October 2 and 3 at the David Rubenstein Treehouse on Harvard University’s campus. The conference opened with a brief retrospective looking back at 20 years of spatial analysis at the CGA, from Peter Bol, CGA’s founding director, as well as Subu Subramanian, the outgoing chair of CGA’s Faculty Advisory Group.

The next day and a half featured keynote talks from Dawn Wright, Esri’s chief scientist, Francesca Dominici, director of Harvard’s Data Science Initiative (HDSI), and Matt Zook from the University of Kentucky. The full conference program also included plenary panels on geospatial skills and industry and humanitarian crisis mapping, as well as over 80 presentations and lightning talks and four panel sessions.

This year’s conference attracted a diverse audience of 180 participants from over 53 universities, 16 non-university research institutes, and 8 companies. Additionally, five pre-conference workshops were offered, covering the topics machine learning and satellite imagery, working with web data, spatial AI, and more. Workshops were attended by 80 students. Exhibitions at the conference included vendor tables, and large TVs featuring a slideshow by the Harvard Map Collection of 400 historic maps, and a retrospective video of CGA maps and projects developed over the years. The conference concluded with the presentation of the 2026 Fisher Prize for Excellence in GIS to one Harvard undergraduate student and one graduate student.