Florida State University’s Spatial Data Science Center won two awards from the FSU/AWS Research Acceleration Fund on May 3, 2026.
As cloud computing continues to reshape the boundaries of what’s computationally possible, researchers from FSU’s College of Social Sciences and Public Policy (COSSPP) are positioning the university at the forefront of data-driven discovery.
The awards were 2 of 11 presented by FSU’s Office of Research and Information Technology Services, recognizing researchers across campus for their creativity and technical excellence in leveraging AWS cloud computing to advance scientific discovery. The event brought together FSU leadership and researchers for an award ceremony, a panel discussion, and a look at the latest Amazon Web Services (AWS) tools, closing with presentations from winners of FSU’s AI Maker Challenge. Each award included up to $20,000 in AWS credits.
Krafft Professor of Spatial Data Science and Director of the Spatial Data Science Center A. Stewart Fotheringham, Ph.D., led two collaborative teams of COSSPP researchers recognized at the event, along with Urban & Regional Planning colleague Mehak Sachdeva, Ph.D., with projects spanning electoral behavior analysis and the development of advanced tools for geographic modeling.
“Members of the Spatial Data Science Center, part of FSU’s COSSPP, largely undertake computer-intensive statistical analyses to uncover aspects of human behavior,” said Dr. Fotheringham. “Such analyses often utilize large data sets and complex models and so need access to high-end computing performance such as that provided by AWS.”
The first award went to “Disentangling Sorting from Socialization: A Longitudinal Spatial Analysis of the American Electorate,” led by Principal Investigator Dr. Mehak Sachdeva, of the Department of Urban & Regional Planning, with Co-PIs Dr. Fotheringham and Mason Mathews, Ph.D., of the Department of Geography. The project will analyze over 180 million voter registration records to uncover the complex, two-way relationship between where people live and how they vote.
“This research gives us an unprecedented opportunity to understand how geography and political identity shape each other over time,” said Dr. Fotheringham.
The second award recognized “A Cloud-Based Platform for Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression,” led by PI Dr. Fotheringham alongside Co-PIs Zhipeng Li, Chen-Lun Kao, and Jia-Jun Chang, doctoral students from the Department of Geography. The project will develop a web-based platform for complex local statistical modeling software, making it universally accessible.
“Broader access to these tools means more researchers can ask and answer questions that were previously out of reach,” Dr. Fotheringham said.
With innovative methods and technological expertise, COSSPP researchers are using cloud computing to accelerate scientific discovery across statistical methods and data analysis.
FSU’s Spatial Data Science Center is housed in the College of Social Sciences and Public Policy’s Department of Geography. For more about the Department of Geography, visit cosspp.fsu.edu/geography, and for more about the Spatial Data Science Center, visit sdsc.fsu.edu.