I am a geospatial AI scientist, currently working on my PhD with the GeoSocial Artificial Intelligence group at the Interdisciplinary Transformation University (IT:U) in Linz, Austria. I work on novel AI methods for knowledge extraction from user-generated data.

My interests consist of an interdisciplinary mix of data science, machine learning, geoinformatics and classic computer science. Previously, I have worked in data science, journalism and software development. I am curious about pretty much everything.

Research

In our age of big data, massive amounts of data are being generated by everyone of us. Whenever we post on social media, or simply use our phones, we leave tiny traces in the digital realm. However, extracting meaningful, privacy-respecting geographic information from such user-generated data remains a challenge due to their heterogeneity and multimodality. My research is all about how we can develop and leverage AI methods to achieve this difficult task.

Due to the context of our research group, a lot of my work currently focuses on the application areas disaster management and epidemiology. However, most techniques are transferable to many areas beyond those. You can check it out in my publications (all open access). Most of what I do bridges data science, machine learning, natural language processing and geoinformatics, in some way or the other.

Other interests

I have lots of interests outside research, some taking centre stage more than others. Currently, I am messing around with a few self-hosting projects, reading as many books as I can, and taking coffee a bit too seriously. Sometimes, I am writing about these things on my blog. Besides that, I am quite involved in building up our university’s student union (ÖH).