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Now in its fourth year the SLA Student Awards are designed to recognise outstanding achievements in the broad field of location analysis. We received applications across a range of subjects including dissertations and extended projects. Our judging panel independently selected winners and runners-up with the aim of seeking evidence of imagination, innovation, sound technical ability and potential for wider impact.

Meet our winners

Our 2018 Postgraduate and Undergraduate winners being presented with their awards by Luke Burns

Undergraduate Awards

  • Winner – Sam Holmes
  • Runner Up – Christopher Drowley

Masters Award

  • Winner – Chengru Deng
  • Runner Up – Ningqian Yang

Undergraduate Awards summary

Winner

University of Leeds

Sam Holmes
University of Leeds, BA Geography (Industrial)

“Academic Analytics: Informing Falmouth University’s Market Strategy with Applied Spatial Analysis”

  • This research takes spatial methodologies readily utilised in retail and applies these to the Higher Education sector
  • Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) will “live or die by the number of fee-paying students they can entice” (Boffey, 2014)
  • Case study: Falmouth University
  • Spatial Interaction Model created to predict the flows of students to Falmouth, taking into consideration wider student flows and university attractiveness
  • Identified areas “overperforming” and “underperforming” with regards to recruitment from across the UK
  • Judges: This work represents very novel research topic and goes about exploring this using outstanding technical skills, in particular through Alteryx and Tableau