A Strong Affirmation

The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF)’s annual USGIF Scholarship Program recognizes promising students studying GEOINT, geospatial sciences, and related fields. Brandon Staple, a student at the University of Colorado-Denver (CU Denver), has been a recipient of this award since 2018.

“Winning this prestigious award is very exciting for me because it is a strong affirmation of the great strides that USGIF is taking to help the GEOINT community: a focus on an emerging workforce of young professionals, support education initiatives and diversity, and invest in emerging technologies to ensure our vital national and economic security,” said Staple.

Staple is currently studying computer science at CU Denver. Staple’s computer science interest is in developing resilient machine learning networks to increase target classification accuracy in critical, real-world GEOINT applications.

He has interned at the National Reconnaissance Office, Google, and the National Security Agency. But ultimately, his goal is to serve the GEOINT community by developing next-generation computer capabilities to assist analysts in performing more efficient and accurate intelligence assessments of complex, multi-source datasets.

“This generous award will enable me to focus on my degree and supplement the research I’ll need to become a professional, while spending more time as a role model and service leader in the community,” said Staple.

This year’s EdGEOcation Giving Fund at USGIF will directly support the 2021 USGIF Scholarship Program.

Your donation will contribute to:

• Ten (10) $1,000 scholarships to high school students for a total of $10,000;
• Twenty (20) $3,000 scholarships to undergraduate and graduate, and doctoral students for a total of $60,000.

To further the advancement of the geospatial tradecraft, USGIF is dedicated to assisting promising students studying GEOINT, geospatial sciences and related fields. The annual USGIF Scholarship Program recognizes the achievements of graduating high school seniors, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students. USGIF has awarded $1.4 million in scholarships since launching the program in 2004.

To learn more about the EdGEOcation Giving Fund and how to donate, visit usgif.org/donate.