It's About Time

Once you get beyond the "Gee whiz!" factor of using Google Earth™ to find a satellite image of your old pick-up truck parked in your driveway, it requires the power of a super-computer to meaningfully store, manipulate or analyze that much data. Most of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) used to plot maps are not up to the task. But with help from some Bowdoin College student researchers, Assistant Professor of Computer Science Laura Toma and her colleagues from other universities have been creating algorithms that manage geographic data to reduce computation time, essentially giving a desktop the power of a supercomputer.