Who We Are
We are a team of professionals engaged in solving problems in geospatial applications.
Polaris Geospatial Services is a company that offers geospatial services with a geodetic-science focus. It was founded by Kyle Snow who has over 30 years of experience spanning surveying, geodesy, agricultural engineering, software development, and teaching. Kyle has a passion for developing best in-kind products and offering exceptional solutions. He has assembled a team of scientists and engineers who share his passion for excellence.
Our Team of Experts
Kyle Snow, PhD
President and Geodesist
Kyle holds a PhD in geodesy from The Ohio State University (OSU) with emphasis on mathematical and statistical methods in geodesy. He studied surveying engineering and mathematics at California State University, Fresno. Kyle has taught both GPS and adjustment computation courses as an adjunct professor at OSU. He worked at Topcon Positioning Systems for over 18 years, serving as a director of research and development for the last 12. He has led teams of geodetic and computer scientists and applied mathematicians and statisticians in the development of GPS (GNSS) network-RTK algorithms, optimization libraries for agricultural engineering programs, and numerous other projects. He is a regular reviewer for various geodetic journals and has remained active in academic research. Besides several journal publications, his notes on adjustment computations have been used for many years by students at OSU and as a reference for geodetic scientists and engineers in industry and academics. His field experience includes the design of a high-precision surveying network at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and 11 years of land surveying experience in California, a state where he holds a license to survey and was formerly a principal partner in a land surveying business.
Franky Yang, PhD
Geodetic Scientist
Franky earned Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in geomatics from the National Chung Kung University in Tainan, Taiwan. She holds both Master of Science and PhD degrees in geodetic science from The Ohio State University. Franky has over ten years of combined academic and industry research and work experience. She planned and managed aerial photogrammetry projects at Real World Engineering Consultant Company in Taipei, Taiwan. While working on her PhD degree, she worked as a summer intern and graduate fellow at the NOAA Cooperative Institute of Great Lakes Research (CIGLR). She performed remote sensing data analysis to explore retrieval methods for lake ice thickness and aggregated long-term Great Lakes ice coverage data in spatial and temporal domains, leading to the publication of two NOAA Technical reports and one Scientific Data paper. Franky loves to process and analyze geospatial data and enjoys writing code for her work in MATLAB, Python, R, and C++.
Andrew Whitacre, MSc
Computer Scientist
Andrew has over 15 years of experience developing computational libraries and software interfaces for GPS (GNSS) and engineering applications. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from The Ohio State University and a Master of Science degree in computer science from Bowling Green State University. Andrew works part time at Polaris Geospatial Solutions.