Alumni Story: Bill Wheaton '82 Reflects on Career in Geospatial Sciences

Bill Wheaton '82 is constantly surprised and delighted that his Geography Degree from Dartmouth paved the way for a rewarding career in what we now call geospatial sciences.  He fondly remembers his geography classes with Dave Lindgren, Clark Archer, and a fabulous geography stretch in Mexico led by Vince Malmstrom which entailed tramping around various parts of Mexico really learning about the power of observing geography while also visiting and studying Meso-American ruins. 

After Dartmouth, Bill worked at ESRI for several years in its very early days doing Arc/Info training in the U.S. and abroad, followed by a career as Director of Geospatial Sciences at Research Triangle Institute (RTI).  RTI is a large, diverse research institute where Bill was able to work on a very wide variety of topics and problems.  Key efforts included working with EPA to develop the National Hydrography Dataset, working for a private client to collect analyze and map radiation data from the Fukushima disaster, and co-developing a U.S. synthetic population used in agent-based models of infectious disease. 

After semi-retiring from RTI, Bill consulted back to RTI on the Environmental Influence on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO), a large multi-disciplinary health research project funded by NIH. 

He's now fully retired and spends some of his time roasting coffee and attempting to make the perfect flat white.