Rate My Professor Krzysztof Janowicz

Krzysztof Janowicz is Univ.-Prof. Dr. and Professor for Geoinformatics at the Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, serving as head and chair of the department since 2022. He earned his PhD in Geoinformatics from the University of Münster in 2008, following which he held a postdoctoral researcher position at the Institute for Geoinformatics (ifgi), University of Münster, as part of the international research training group on Semantic Integration of Geospatial Information and the Münster Semantic Interoperability Lab (MUSIL). From there, he advanced to Assistant Professor at the GeoVISTA Center, Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University, prior to 2011. Subsequently, he joined the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) as a full professor of Geographic Information Science and Geoinformatics in the Geography Department, where he directed the Center for Spatial Studies and served as program chair of the Cognitive Science Program until his move to Austria in 2022.

Janowicz's academic interests center on Spatial Data Science and GeoAI, with a methodological focus on integrating theory-driven techniques, such as semantics, and data-driven methods, like data mining, for geographic knowledge representation. His research explores how AI systems represent and reason about geographic spaces and places, incorporating neurosymbolic AI to address issues of bias and ethics. As Editors-in-Chief of the Semantic Web journal by SAGE, he contributes significantly to the field. Key publications include 'The SSN ontology of the W3C semantic sensor network incubator group' (2012), 'SOSA: A lightweight ontology for sensors, observations, samples, and actuators' (2019), 'GeoAI: spatially explicit artificial intelligence techniques for geographic knowledge discovery and beyond' (2020), 'GeoFM: how will geo-foundation models reshape spatial data science and GeoAI?' (2025), and 'The Geography of Evolving Concepts: Quantifying Spatial, Temporal, and Semantic Consequences of Ontology Changes' (2026). He has received the Carolyn Merry Mentoring Award (2024), Best Paper Award (2024), and Best Poster Candidate for COSIT 2024. Janowicz has organized events such as the Sixth Spatial Data Science Symposium (2025) and delivered invited talks, including 'How Can We Know What AI Will Know?' (2025).