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, he 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 his interest in the burgeoning discipline of geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing. He entered the geography graduate program at the University of Idaho in 1999.

Much of his 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, he began work with the Army at Fort Walker (formerly 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, he 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. He moved to North Carolina to attend the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in 2007.

At UNCG, his 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, inspecting and making sense of this information by hand is an impossibility, and little research has been done in the science of metadata and automating metadata assessment and evaluation.   This work has led a project 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 he 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, he 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.

He 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, training and data can aid in a variety of different disciplines and communities if used properly.  He has served as a PI for more than $3,600,000 in grant funding from agencies such as the North Carolina Department of Transportation, United States Department of Agriculture, National Science Foundation and NASA.  His work has included pure research and industry applications as well as outreach and training to support the proliferation of geospatial data science in fields such as health mapping, transportation, education, natural hazards, the food environment, redlining, environmental science and health disparities.  

As an educator, he 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. He 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, his 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 Esri, the North Carolina Department of Transportation, City of Durham, Environmental Protection Agency, Lowe’s Corporation, Amazon, 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, he 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.