Dawn Wright (a.k.a. "Deepsea Dawn") is lead UCGIS delegate from Oregon State University, where she is Professor of Geography and Oceanography, and the director of the Davey Jones' Locker Marine GIS/Seafloor Mapping Laboratory. Her past service to the UCGIS includes Board of Directors, Chair of Communications, Local Arrangements Chair for the UCGIS Summer Assembly in Oregon, Education Committee, Coordinator of the 2nd UCGIS Virtual Seminar, Chair of the Distance Education Working Group, twice on the presentation team of a UCGIS Congressional Breakfast, and contributor to a chapter in the recent UCGIS book, "A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science." She is currently on the Membership and Education Committees, and Vice-Chair of Communications.
Dawn's research interests include geographic information science, marine
geography, tectonics of mid ocean ridges, and the processing and interpretation
of high-resolution bathymetric, video, and underwater photographic images. She
has completed oceanographic fieldwork (often with GIS) in some of the most
geologically-active regions of the planet, including volcanoes under the
Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and has had 3 dives in the Alvin
submersible. Dawn also serves on the editorial boards of the "International
Journal of Geographical Information Science," "Transactions in GIS," and
"Geospatial Solutions", and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences'
National Needs for Coastal Mapping and Charting Committee. Her recent books
include "Marine and Coastal Geographical Information Systems" (Taylor & Francis,
2000), "Undersea with GIS" (ESRI Press, 2002), and "Place Matters: Geospatial
Tools for Marine Science, Conservation, and Management in the Pacific Northwest"
(OSU Press, Spring 2005). She holds degrees from UCSB (Ph.D. in Physical
Geography and Marine Geology), Texas A&M (M.S., Oceanography), and Wheaton
College in Illinois (B.S., Geology).