By Graham Cook

Plaque installed to remember Andrew Wade, a visual analytics student who was killed in a plane crash last year

A plaque commemorating the memory of Andrew T. Wade, an SFU graduate student who died last September, has been mounted outside of the interactive arts and technology labs on the surrey campus. The plaque, which depicts Wade in front of the Taj Mahal, is fixed on a wall just steps away from the lab that Wade himself worked in. He was the first person to graduate from the Master’s Degree Program in Visual Analytics.

Wade, who came to SFU from Denver, Colorado and is described on the plaque as “a pioneer in the field of Visual Analytics,” perished in a plane crash in Nepal that also claimed the lives of 18 others, including the pilot. The memorial states that Wade was working with SFU’s BC-India Mobility Initiative, using his skills in Visual Analytics to solve data set problems in software.

Despite being just 26 years old at the time of his death, Wade had already worked with Boeing to find ways to protect planes from bird strikes. His plaque states that his work led to “changes in five Boeing aircraft and their pilot safety manual,” as well as a full-time position with Boeing that would have begun in November 2011.

The family of Andrew Wade accepted his master’s degree on his behalf during convocation last October. In addition, The Andrew Wade Memorial Scholarship in Visual Analytics will be awarded every year to a student of the Master’s Degree in Visual Analytics at SFU.