Prof. Josef Strobl is Professor of Geoinformatics at the University of Salzburg, where he previously served as Head of the Department of Geography before founding and leading the Department of Geoinformatics until 2022. He holds degrees in Geography from the University of Vienna and has taught GIScience and related disciplines at universities around the world.

Josef Strobl is a Full Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. As a founding director of both the iSPACE Research Studio and the Austrian Academy of Sciences Department for GIScience, he has played a key role in establishing geospatial research and innovation beyond traditional university settings. Through service on the boards of leading international geospatial organizations and on the editorial boards of prominent GIScience and Geoinformatics journals, he has contributed significantly to shaping educational, organizational, and research initiatives in the field.

His current research focuses on geospatial modelling and simulation, spatial analysis, and distributed architectures for Spatial Knowledge Infrastructures. Working with interdisciplinary research teams, he explores real-time and mobile geospatial services, terrain analysis, and dynamic process modelling, supporting applications in planning, resource management, citizen science, and public participation.

Prof. Strobl has been instrumental in developing international geospatial education. He helped establish graduate programmes linking the University of Salzburg with partner institutions worldwide and played a leading role in the development of the global UNIGIS postgraduate distance-learning network. Capacity building remains a central theme of his work, ranging from workshops at schools and GIS Day initiatives to the creation of the iDEAS:lab outreach facility at Salzburg’s Science City and the mentoring of international graduate programmes.

Committed to knowledge exchange and community building, he founded the annual AGIT and GI_Forum symposia in Salzburg and the GISCA conference series in Central Asia, which have become influential platforms for discussing advances, applications, and future directions in geospatial technologies and GIScience. As President of the Austrian Eurasia-Pacific Uninet, he actively promotes international collaboration across disciplines, countries, and cultures.

Above all, Josef Strobl values the connections formed through education, research, and collaboration, and always welcomes opportunities to reconnect with alumni, project partners, colleagues, and friends.