James Ellis

Jim Ellis began his remote sensing career with Gulf Oil in 1982. He has over 25 industry publications and has taught several workshops on remote sensing at industry conferences. He was an American Association of Petroleum Geologist (AAPG) Distinguished Lecturer for 1995-1996, discussing Geological and Environmental Remote Sensing for International Petroleum Operations at universities and professional societies in the U.S.A. and Canada. He is a member of the GIS-GPS Advisory Committee, Diablo Valley College (2002-present) and teaches remote sensing & GIS lab courses for the GIS/GPS Certificate Program. Jim received his Bachelors from the University of Rochester (1970), spent the next 5 years in the U.S. Navy, and then went to the University of Buffalo for his Masters and Ph.D. in Geology. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology, Rice University (1981-1982). He joined the oil industry and was with Chevron until 1997 implementing remote sensing and associated technologies for international environmental and exploration applications. In 1997 he helped found a start-up company, The MapFactory, to expand into other remote sensing applications. In 2002 he established Ellis GeoSpatial (www.ellis-geospatial.com) to provide focused remote sensing & GIS solutions to industry and government. He is a State of California Professional Geologist, Certificate No. 7391. Lately Jim has been converting dust-covered, 1977-1982 paper photos, maps and tables of glaciers and rock glaciers (created while a graduate student at Buffalo) to cool digital files for viewing & distribution via Goggle Earth, so anyone with Internet access can see this unique, climatic-change archive.