Mizzou Geography Department

Feeling inspired by the research opportunities? Excited about the classes available that enable undergraduate research opportunities, public presentation, AND new skill development? Ready to explore with us in geography? Check out some of our Fall 2026 classes 😏

We are so proud of one of our graduating seniors, Rachel Riley, being recognized campuswide through Mizzou's Show Me Mizzou:

"Geography graduate routes a path home: From Kansas City to Mizzou and back again, Rachel Riley learned to map communities through data and use geography to show real-world impacts."

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Congratulations to Geography rising senior Addison Vallier (right) for recently being awarded a MizzouForward Undergraduate Research Training Grant! Addison will be using code developed by doctoral student, Lily McEwen (left), in the 3D Heritage Informatics Lab (PI Professor Medeia Csoba DeHass), to test closed-loop system LLMs combined with R-Packages for audio transcription and ethnographic data analysis within the Indigenous Data Governance framework.

Dr. Guhlincozzi saw 14 undergraduate students from two of her upper level courses present their semester long research projects at the MU Office of Undergraduate Research Spring Research Day via poster today! The two classes were Health Geography and Gender and Immigration/Geopolitics, and students presented topics related to the course material. Some of them tackled subjects completely new to them, gained skills they started the semester with no knowledge on, or delved more deeply into a topic they cared for than ever before. These fantastic students were among 300+ undergraduates who participated in Spring Research Day - congratulations to everyone on their excellent achievements!

"For University of Missouri graduate student Megan Hirni, finding connections across disciplines has opened the door to creativity in research and given her the chance to visit Europe. Hirni is traveling to Prague this week to present at the International Society for Autism Research conference from Wednesday to Saturday.

The interdisciplinary conference focuses on autism health outcomes, barriers to access and epidemiology. The conference brings people together from many different parts of the autism community. This includes researchers, physicians and neurodiverse individuals.

Hirni will be presenting at a poster session within the conference’s “Systems of Care” category.

Hirni is a part of Aída Guhlincozzi’s Critical and Communities Geography Lab on campus. The lab is focused on public health and geography, exploring marginalized communities. Hirni’s particular research looks at care access for individuals with autism, including diagnostics services and individualized education plans in schools. The research is done in collaboration with ECHO Autism at Mizzou, a part of the Missouri Telehealth Network that connects individuals with autism specialists."

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Another Show-Me Research Week success! Jingzhou Zhang is pursuing a Master's in Library Science degree, and for her capstone has been taking on the significant effort of organizing the MU Geography Department's Map Collection. Many of these historical maps include Columbia, MO specific material that is not digitally available. Jingzhou has worked extremely hard, taking steps to even create an online database for the public to access these maps, enabled by the Geography Department's large format scanner. Undergraduate Geography student Andrew has been assisting with the scanning process, and together these students presented a poster of their important work! Thanks to Dr. Sarah Buchanan of the Library Sciences department and Dr. Guhlincozzi from Geography for coordinating this interdisciplinary effort! Check out the work in progress digital archive in the comments!

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Today, graduate students in the "Health, Healthcare Access, and Geography" course (GEOG 4450/7450), which is part of the GIS Certificate and taught by Dr. Aída Guhlincozzi, presented their course semester projects at the University of Missouri Show-Me Research Week! These projects all incorporate health geographic concepts and are designed by the students and conducted all semester, culminating in a presentation and final product. Congratulations to such an important achievement! These research posters were printed with the Geography Department's in-house plotter, helping to facilitate education and research!

Research assistants at the Heritage Informatics Lab, Geography MA student Brennan Meyerhoff and Geography senior Peyton Smith, presented their poster at the 2026 AAG in San Francisco on the 3D Documentation and Conservation of Petrified Redwood Stumps Using Photogrammetry at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. Their work is funded by the National Park Service and the Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds. Brennan and Peyton 3D documented 20 sites in the Park and built 40 digital 3D models as part of the collaboration.