Nikolay Golosov

I graduated from St Petersburg State University in 2011 with a degree in Geoinformatics. Before attending Penn State, I have had about seven years of industry exposure working for GIS consulting companies and as a land surveyor. During my tenure in the industry, I learned how to apply my knowledge and skills to solve practical problems in GIS development, spatial analysis, and cartographic visualization, which further strengthened my interest in this area of expertise. Eventually, I have decided to return to academia and completed a Geography graduate program at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). Having met my degree requirements, I’ve worked as a research assistant at ArctiCENTER, studying spatiotemporal patterns of COVID-19 development in the Arctic.

My previous experience in the industry and my graduate studies greatly informed my research interests. During my UNI study, I worked as a research assistant on several NSF-sponsored projects that provoked my research interest in several directions. From the project focused on studying the COVID-19 pandemic in the Arctic, I have developed a significant interest in social network data analysis applications in public health, such as developing ways to detect new hot spots using Twitter feed analysis.

During my thesis research, I have studied how to apply the 3D dasymetric mapping method to obtain the fine-scale estimation of the urban population on the building level. I am interested in developing and using the new fine-scale estimation technique of the urban population counts based on a machine learning approach.