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
Undergraduate Awards
- Winner – Sam Holmes
- Runner Up – Christopher Drowley
Masters Award
- Winner – Chengru Deng
- Runner Up – Ningqian Yang
Undergraduate Awards summary
Winner
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
