The following is a special contribution to this blog from Shashi Shekhar and Mohamed Mokbel, faculty in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Minnesota. The pair organized the 12th International Symposium on Spatial and Temporal Databases in Minneapolis, MN, this week.

We were delighted to host a successful Vision and Challenge Track at the 12th International Symposium on Spatial and Temporal Databases this past Wednesday through Friday. SSTD 2011 was the twelfth event in a series of biennial symposia that discuss research in spatial, temporal and spatio-temporal data management. This year’s SSTD program exhibited diversity across organizations (e.g., academic, industry, and government), career stage (e.g., graduate students, early-stage, mid-stage, and senior researchers), and research life-cycle (e.g., research papers, demonstrations, challenge/vision papers).

The Vision and Challenge Track invited submissions of short papers in the areas of interest of the main event that: 1) described revolutionary ideas that are likely to guide research in the near future; 2) challenged existing assumptions prevalent in the research community; and 3) identified novel applications and technology trends that create new research challenges. Of the 21 vision/challenge papers submitted, 8 were accepted.

Of these 8, three were chosen for CCC Headwaters awards. (As we believe many papers in the Vision and Challenge Track will be headwaters for influential rivers of follow-on discoveries, inventions, and research papers, we named the awards after the Mississippi River’s headwaters — the place within Minnesota where the mighty Mississippi begins its 2000-mile journey as a humble stream, ultimately becoming one of the longest and most powerful rivers in the world.) Prizes were provided for the first-, second-, and third-placed papers/presentations on the basis of the papers and subsequent presentations. The prizes took the form of travel reimbursement awards totaling $1,000, $750, and $500 for first, second, and third place, respectively.

The award-winners were (after the jump…):

1st place: Dev Oliver and Daniel J. Steinberger
“From Geography to Medicine: Exploring Innerspace via Spatial and Temporal Databases”

2nd place: Kai-Florian Richter and Stephan Winter
“Citizens as Database: Conscious Ubiquity in Data Collection”

3rd place: Hans-Peter Kriegel, Matthias Schubert and Andreas Zuefle
“Managing and Mining Spatio-Temporal Data in Massive Multiplayer Online Games”

The Vision/Challenge Track was concluded with a panel discussion on “envisioning 2020 spatial research.” The panel — chaired by CCC Director Erwin Gianchandani — featured experts from industry, academia, and government:

• Erik Hoel, Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri);
• Hans-Peter Kriegel, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich;
• Suman Nath, Microsoft Research;
• Yufei Tao, Chinese University of Hong Kong; and
• Raju Vatsavai, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.