Open PhD position in Geomatics/GIS

Research area: Spatio-temporal analysis of crowd-sourced Geoinformation

For over a decade, crowd-sourced data (e.g., Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), social media) have become a prime topic in the geospatial research community by helping answer societal questions across many disciplines (e.g., transportation, natural resources, tourism, natural disaster management). The field is currently undergoing rapid changes with new data sharing platforms, social media apps, and location based services on the rise. To fully access, understand, and utilize the information scattered across these platforms, advanced analysis methods of user contribution patterns and new approaches in cross-platform data fusion are needed. Crowd-sourced data also provides new opportunities for rapid event detection, data quality assessment, and data quality improvement.

The Geomatics Program at the University of Florida is seeking a PhD candidate who brings computer programming and data handling skills to advance the analysis of crowd-sourced geo-data conducted at UF.

The ideal candidate should satisfy the following requirements:
– A Master’s degree in Geographic Information Science, Computer Science, Statistics or other related analytical discipline
– Experience with GIS, spatial databases (e.g., PostgreSQL/PostGIS), and Linux
– Versatile in computer programming/scripting (e.g., Java, R, Python)
– Excellent communication skills in both spoken and written English
– Passion for crowd-sourced and/or open data

The PhD candidate will enter an established program leading to the degree of PhD within a time frame of four years. The PhD research will be carried out at UF’s Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center (http://flrec.ifas.ufl.edu/) located in the southeastern coastal part of Florida (near Miami). The position includes a tuition waiver, health insurance, and annual stipend.