Timothy J Mulrooney

Tim Mulrooney is originally from Long Valley, New Jersey. He is a 1995 graduate of Columbia University in New York City, where he was a member of the wrestling team. After graduating from Columbia, Mulrooney taught at the John Carroll School, a coeducational private high school in Bel Air, Maryland. While teaching at John Carroll, he earned an M.S. degree in Computer Science at Loyola College in Baltimore. Those studies, combined with teaching earth science, elicited Mulrooney’s interest in the burgeoning discipline of geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing. Mulrooney entered the geography graduate program at the University of Idaho in 1999.

Much of Mulrooney’s studies at the University of Idaho revolved around cartography, GIS and remote sensing technology and the programming languages to help automate digital map creation. In September of 2002, Mulrooney began work with the Army at Fort A.P. Hill. The goal of the Sustainable Range Program (SRP) office was to create mapping products and perform spatial analysis so the military could train in an environmentally, fiscally and socially responsible manner. In addition to his mapping duties, Mulrooney led various GIS technical workshops and discussions about the increasingly popular field of GIS, its applications and future use as it applies to the military. Mulrooney moved to North Carolina to attend the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in 2007.

At UNCG, Mulrooney’s Ph.D. dissertation focus was on using open-source programming and data-mining techniques to assess GIS metadata integrity for large spatial databases. In his work experience, he had seen an increasing schism between the rate at which data are created and the rate at which data are cataloged. Given that each metadata file contains more than 400 individual elements, efficiently extracting information is an impossibility, and little research has been done in the science of metadata and automating metadata. Mulrooney’s research explored methodology within the open-source environment in which data can be turned into information that inevitably supports the decision-making process. This work has led to work with the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) to provide GIS metadata education to statewide stakeholders, in hopes of applying the new state and local government GIS metadata standard that was passed by the North Carolina Geographic Information Coordinating Council (NCGICC) in late 2016 and is being utilized to this day.

Before Mulrooney was appointed at North Carolina Central University, he did GIS research at the Center for Community Safety at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU). In this position, Mulrooney used maps and spatial analysis to assess quality-of-life issues such as crime analysis, re-entry mapping, environmental justice and issues related to education.

Mulrooney has a vested interest in all forms of GIS, including GIS metadata and data quality standards, GIS education and subject areas in which GIS can be implemented at the college and high school level. Whether we realize it or not, we all use GIS in some form or another on a daily basis. Every phenomenon has a spatial component, and the democratization of GIS software and data can aid in a variety of different disciplines and communities if used properly. Mulrooney completed a three-year grant provided by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to use GIS to measure facets of rural food security, or one’s ability to have safe and reliable access to affordable and nutritious food. The term “food desert,” which represents low-income areas far from fresh food, has been used to delineate food-insecure regions. However, contemporary research has shown the over-availability of poor food sources (fast-food and convenience stores) over healthy ones is more of a determinant of poor health outcomes than an absence of healthy food. Mulrooney is continuing on with this work on another three-year USDA-funded grant to explore the integrity of data used in the spatial and aspatial analysis of the food environment. This includes the development of field applications to collect in-situ data as well as data mining techniques to comb through voluminous amounts of spatial data.

As an educator, Mulrooney works hard to facilitate data-driven decision making through the latest technology and the projects he presents in his classes. There are copious amounts of data on which we make decisions; the ability to download, import, create, analyze, map and render data in all forms is absolutely essential in the workforce. Mulrooney has had 22 students earn awards at conferences and workshops such as the NCCU Research Symposium, the North Carolina Geographical Society Annual Meeting, the North Carolina GIS Conference and the National Society for Black Engineers Annual Conference. Professionally, Mulrooney’s biggest source of pride comes from former students who fostered their skills and have moved on to successful careers in the field at places such as the North Carolina Department of Transportation, City of Durham, Environmental Protection Agency, Lowe’s Corporation, National Forest Service, Army Corps of Engineers, real estate firms and private contractors or students who have gone onto Ph.D. programs at places such as North Carolina State University, North Carolina A&T State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Outside of school, Mulrooney enjoys traveling and sports. He has competed in marathons and triathlons. He set his personal record (PR) at the 2017 Peak to Creek Marathon in Morganton, North Carolina, and competed at the 2019 Boston Marathon.