MUSA Brown Bag Lunch Talk with Jeff Frankl

Jeff Frankl wrapped up the spring MUSA Brown Bag Lunches on Friday, March 18. Frankl, who is a UI/UX Designer at Azavea, began co-teaching the MUSA course Java Programming for Planning and Urban Management this spring. He earned his Bachelor’s degree at Haverford College in Sociology and moved to Philadelphia with intentions of working on social justice issues. At each organization he worked, Frankl ended up redesigning their website and streamlining various data and analytical information, so eventually he came to realize that his recreational activities should become his profession. Though he has been making websites for himself and others since the 1990s recreationally and in recent years has put his skills to work at Azavea, where he is a user interface / user experience (abbreviated as UI/UX) developer. He discussed his work on a variety of projects addressing social justice issues that use geospatial analysis to address them. His most recent work was on a tree planting analysis project that determines not only where trees are needed but also where they will thrive most. The projects uses LIDAR data to determine where existing trees live. The data this project uses is publicly available from the National Land Public database.