Civil Engineering Student Wins Francis H. Moffitt Memorial Scholarship

Florida Atlantic University graduate civil engineering student, Jason Blankenship, B.S.G.E. ‘17 won the Francis H. Moffitt Memorial Scholarship at the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) Annual Conference and International Lidar Mapping Forum, that was held February 5 through 7, 2018 in Denver, Co.

The purpose of the award is to encourage upper-division undergraduate and graduate-level college students to pursue a course of study in surveying and photogrammetry leading to a career in the geospatial mapping profession. Blankenship was awarded $7,000, a certificate and a one-year membership in ASPSR.

Blankenship has more than 18 years of experience in civil engineering, LIDAR processing, photogrammetry, GIS, and surveying. He graduated from FAU in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in Geomatics Engineering, and is expected to graduate in 2018 with his Master’s degree in civil engineering. His thesis research area is to develop a new method of mapping that combines computer vision with classic photogrammetry techniques. Blankenship has worked as a graduate research assistant in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, he is the outgoing chair of the Student Advisory Council for ASPRS, and the current president of the ASPRS FAU Student Chapter.

"This is the first time an FAU student has won this prestigious award from ASPRS," said Hongbo Su, Ph.D., assistant professor in the FAU Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatics Engineering, and Blankenship’s research advisor.  "This scholarship recognizes both Jason's leadership and academic achievements, and it is with great pleasure that I congratulate him on receiving this well-deserved award."

To be eligible for the award recipients must be upper-division undergraduate or graduate-level students. Students are evaluated on their application material that includes their list of courses taken and experience related to the surveying, photogrammetry and other related geospatial information technologies.