Rate My Professor Stefan Leyk

Stefan Leyk is a Professor of Geography in the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he has been a faculty member since 2007. He serves as Faculty Director of the Institute of Behavioral Science and Associate Chair of the Department of Geography. Leyk earned his Ph.D. from the University of Zurich and the Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape in 2005, his M.S. from the Technical University of Dresden in 2002, and his B.S. from the same university in 2001.

Leyk's research centers on computational GIScience, with expertise in uncertainty modeling using probabilistic approaches and fuzzy set theory, small area estimation for demographic and health data, cartographic pattern recognition from historical maps and remote sensing imagery, dasymetric modeling, and spatio-temporal dynamics in socio-environmental systems. His interdisciplinary work examines urbanization, land cover change over long time periods, and their interactions with environmental processes in natural hazard contexts. He has received significant funding, including a $499,999 NSF grant in 2024 for the Imola project developing methods to extract spatiotemporal road network data from historical USGS maps spanning 1884–2006; a 2016 NSF Medium grant for collaborative research on linked spatial-temporal datasets from historical maps; and a 2011 NIH grant of $147,000 for studying environmental variability, migration, and rural livelihoods in South Africa. Key publications include "Two centuries of settlement and urban development in the United States" (Science Advances, 2020), "Towards the automated large-scale reconstruction of past land cover from historical map series" (Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 2022), the book "Using Historical Maps in Scientific Studies" (2020), and "Exposing the urban continuum: Implications and cross-sectoral perspectives for urban change research" (2018). In 2014, Leyk was awarded the Award of Excellence as an Outstanding Teacher for Technology in Teaching by the College of Arts and Sciences at CU Boulder.