Hamed
Alemohammad

Clark CGA Director


Dear Clark CGA Community, 

As we move into another exciting season at Clark CGA, we are pleased to share some of the projects, achievements, and collaborations that have shaped the past quarter. In this newsletter, you will find updates on our recent work, upcoming activities, and the events where our team will be organizing, presenting and engaging with the broader geospatial community. Looking ahead, we are expanding our efforts in agentic AI and its potential to transform geospatial research and teaching. We are also proud to be working with NASA to develop foundation model tutorials that support learning and adoption across the Earth science community. In parallel, we continue to advance our AI benchmarking initiatives with the Taylor Geospatial, helping establish rigorous evaluation frameworks and community benchmarks to empower practitioners in evaluating AI models for their applications. Thank you for your continued interest in and support of Clark CGA, and we hope you enjoy this edition of our newsletter. 


- Hamed Alemohammad

Mapping the Future of Conservation in Congo

"The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) holds some of the most ecologically vital landscapes on Earth. Its forests store billions of tons of carbon, its savannas shelter extraordinary biodiversity, and its rivers sustain life on a continental scale. The Congo Basin rainforest, second in size only to the Amazon, is not just a regional treasure but [...]"

Clark University Hosts 2nd Annual Northeast Higher Ed GIS Facilitators Meet Up

"On Friday, April 10th, 2026, Clark University's Center for Geospatial Analytics was proud to host the 2nd Annual Northeast Higher Ed GIS Facilitators Meet Up, welcoming approximately 40 GIS professionals from across the Northeast United States for a full day of collaboration, learning, and [...]"

April Carlson pictured with son Anthony

Welcoming April Carlson to the Team

"We're happy to welcome April Carlson as our new Assistant Director. April joins us with a strong background in grants, operations, and research administration, and years of experience helping research work run the way it should behind the scenes.


Before stepping into this role, Carlson was[...]"

The Architecture of Vision: Insights from the #WallOfMaps

"How do we make sense of systems that are too big to see? At the Clark Center for Geospatial Analytics (Clark CGA), this is the central question of our work. Through our #WallOfMaps series, we are stepping back from the code to explore how mapping serves as a bridge between where we [...]"

Can AI Map Aquaculture from Space?

Improving Coastal Habitat Mapping with Prithvi AI Foundation Models


"New research evaluates NASA and IBM’s Prithvi Geospatial foundation models on a real-world semantic segmentation task: mapping mangrove forests and aquaculture ponds. [...]"

Researcher Spotlight: Mapping Climate Resilience with Anas Oubaha

"The Clark Center for Geospatial Analytics (CGA) was proud to welcome Anas Oubaha, a visiting Ph.D. candidate from Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) in Morocco, whose work stood at the vital intersection of hydrology, machine learning, and remote sensing. Affiliated with the International Water Research Institute (IWRI), Anas had [...]"

From GeoAI Research to Real-World Impact: Clark CGA’s Earth Observation Embeddings Workshop

"Environmental decisions increasingly depend on Earth observation data, but translating that data into something decision-makers can actually use is still hard. GeoAI is changing that, not just by improving models, but by improving the pathways from research to real workflows. That was the focus of a three-day collaboration hosted [...]"

Eli Simonson

Clark Research Associate

Eli Simonson will attend the GeoEmbeddings Sprint at IBM Zurich from October 27-28, 2026 in Zurich, Switzerland.

Hamed Alemohammad, Sam Khallagi, Rufai Omowunmi Balogun, and Denys Godwin will attend SatSummit 2026 from November 18-19, 2026.

Hamed Alemohammad, Sam Khallagi, Eli Simonson, Denys Godwin, and Rufai Omowunmi Balogun will attend the 2026 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Meeting from December 7-11, 2026. The team is organizing a workshop on AI foundation models, and Hamed, Sam, and Denys will also present their work at the conference.