Robert B. McMaster is a Professor and Chair of Geography at the University of Minnesota.  He received a B.A. (cum laude) from Syracuse University in 1978 and a Ph.D. in Geography and Meteorology from the University of Kansas in 1983.  He has held previous appointments at UCLA (1983-1988) and Syracuse University (1988-1989).  At the University of Minnesota, his research interests include automated generalization (including algorithmic development and testing, the development of conceptual models, and interface design), environmental risk assessment (including assessing environmental injustice to hazardous materials, the development of new spatial methodologies for environmental justice, and the development of risk assessment models), and the history of U.S. academic cartography.  He teaches courses in cartography, geographic information science, quantitative methods, and research methods.  He has published several books including: Map Generalization: Making Rules for Knowledge Representation (with B. Buttenfield), Generalization in Digital Cartography (with K. Stuart Shea), Thematic Cartography and Geographic Visualization (with T. Slocum, F. Kessler and H. Howard), A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science (with E. L. Usery), and Scale and Geographic Inquiry (with E. Sheppard).

 

His papers have been published in The American Cartographer, Cartographica, The International Yearbook of Cartography, Geographical Analysis, Geographical Systems, Cartography and GIS, The International Journal of Exposure Analysis, and several conference proceedings, including Auto-Carto, and Spatial Data Handling.  He has also served as editor of the journal Cartography and Geographic Information Systems from 1990-1996, and the Association of American Geographers (AAG), Resource Publications in Geography.  He served as Chair of both the AAG’s Cartography and Geographic Information Systems Specialty Groups, served three years on the National Steering Committee for the GIS/LIS ‘92, ‘93, and ‘94 conferences, was Co-Director (with Marc Armstrong) of the Eleventh International Symposium on Computer-Assisted Cartography (Auto-Carto-11), served on the U.S. National Committee to the International Cartographic Association, and as a member of the Advisory Board for the Center for Mapping at Ohio State University.  He also served as President of the United States’ Cartography and Geographic Information Society and both Chair of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science’s (UCGIS) Research Committee and UCGIS Board Member.  In 1999, he was elected as a Vice President of the International Cartographic Association, and was re-elected in 2003.