Research profile

I am currently a full professor for Geoinformatics and Earth Observation at Aalborg University (AAU), Denmark in which I started as Assistant Professor in 2016.

My academic career started with a PhD journey in 2008 at the University of Vienna (UniVie) focusing on simulation of land use/cover changes dynamics and defended my dissertation in April 2011 with excellence. My dissertation was awarded by Springer for publication as an outstanding PhD thesis. After my PhD, I continued my research career as a postdoc researcher at the Univie until 2012. Meanwhile, I served as a consultant at the United Nations office in Vienna as a Geoinformatics expert and share my expertise with experts, end-users and global disaster managers. Then, I started a postdoctoral researcher position at the Heidelberg University from April 2012 and was granted an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship until 2015. Thereafter, I continued as a senior scientist at GIScience research group, Heidelberg University until March 2016 before joining AAU.  

My research interest spans from the integration of geographical/earth observation/citizen observation data into computational models/approaches for modelling the present and futuristic state of complex phenomena e.g., land use change, natural hazards and climate change impacts on nature and society. I apply geographical/statistical models, agent-based modelling, as well as (geo)machine learning models.