Summary of interests Curriculum Vitae (.pdf version) Email me at savelyev at psu.edu
Hello, my name is Alexander Savelyev. I am a first-year PhD student at the Department of Geography at the Pennsylvania State University. You can reach me at savelyev at psu.edu.
My academic career began with an application to the Department of Geography at the Saint-Petersburg State University (SPSU), Russia. I was at the time (and still am) fascinated by the complexity, scale and variety of the phenomena that are addressed by this particular discipline. After receiving my BA in cartography from SPSU I came to the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) and spent some time there working on my Masters degree. Over the years that I spent at SPSU and UNI I received extensive training in various sub-disciplines of geography, cartography and, to some extent, computer science. It is this fusion between the disciplines of geography and computer science that brought me to the Doctorate program at the Pennsylvania State University.
My current research interests generally revolve around the unique ability of maps to generate, convey and emphasize spatial knowledge. Coupled with my recent interest in computer science, this brought me to the realm of geographical information systems (GIS) and geovisual analytics. Some of my previous experience belongs to the domains of remote sensing (particularly in the thermal infrared part of the spectum), spatial decision support (SDSS), GIS customization and web design (mostly Flex and AJAX-related technologies).
As I have mentioned before, I have some exposure to the core concepts of computer science. I have taken classes in computer graphics, design and architecture of GIS, database systems, information storage and retrieval (natural language processing and data mining), design and analysis of algorithms (complexity analysis of algorithms, tractability of computational problems) and in theory of computation (language parsing, regular languages and grammars, finite state automata and such). I taught myself C, Dephi, Java, Python, Processing, VBA, ActionScript and JavaScript. I have debugged and customized code in C++, C#, PHP and VB .NET, although I have not worked extensively with these languages.
| 2008 | Master of Arts in Geography, University of Northern Iowa, IA, USA |
| Cartography and GIS Certificate, University of Northern Iowa, IA, USA | |
| 2006 | Diploma of Specialist (summa cum laude) in Cartography, Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia |
| 2010 – present | Research Assistant, GeoVISTA Center, Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University |
| 2009 – 2010 | Research Associate, GeoTREE Center, Department of Geography, University of Northern Iowa |
| Teaching Assistant, Department of Geography, University of Northern Iowa | |
| 2007 – 2009 | Research Assistant, GeoTREE Center, Department of Geography, University of Northern Iowa |
Savelyev, A. & Sugumaran, R. (2008) Surface Temperature Mapping of the University of Northern Iowa Campus Using High Resolution Thermal Infrared Aerial Imageries, Sensors, 8 (8) 5055-5068.
AAG 2010 Annual Conference, Washington, DC – Development of the OpenSDSS.
ASPRS 2008 Annual Conference, Portland, OR – Surface Temperature Mapping of the University of Northern Iowa Campus.
ASPRS (American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing)
AAG (Association of American Geographers)