Mark Leipnik

Professor
Geographical Information Systems

I was born Feb.14, 1962 in Gainesville Florida, where my father who was a government aerospace scientist was at the time a visiting professor of Mathematics. Besides time spent in as a child Gainesville, I lived on a military base in the Mojave Desert in California, in South Australia, and in Santa Barbara, California. I developed an interest in international issues while visiting over 30 countries as a child which partially influenced my choice of geography as a vocation. I studied Environment Studies, Economics and Chemistry as an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). Receiving two BA degrees in 1985 and completed a MBA related to public administration and environmental management at Rice University in 1987. I then started a PhD program in Geography at UCSB with an emphasis in water resources and GIS in 1988. I took a leave of absence in 1992, to work full time for the U.S. Government’s Department of the Interior on environmental issues, based in Boulder City, Nevada. I competed a PhD from UCSB in Geography with a dissertation on the use of GIS and groundwater modeling to assess and remediate contamination at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California in 1995. In 1996, I went to work as an assistant professor in both Geography and Geology programs at SHSU. In this capacity most of my teaching has related to GIS but I have also taught hydrogeology, conservation, cartography and field studies courses. My major research interests are applications of geo-spatial technologies to environmental, marketing, law enforcement and demographic issues. I have also done consulting work for city, county, state and federal governments, large corporations and small firms as taught graduate courses on GIS in public health at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand and on the Economics of Natural Resources at the National University of Suriname in Paramaribo.