dr. M. Farnaghi (Mahdi)

I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Twente, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Department of Geo-Information Processing (GIP), Enschede, The Netherlands.

My primary research interest has been in the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and geodata processing (or GeoAI, in short). During Ph.D., I worked on solutions based on semantic web concepts/technologies and AI to generate geodata processing workflows automatically. After the Ph.D., I extended my research further into the spatial data science and big data processing fields, where I have been using machine learning (ML) for spatio-temporal modeling in different application areas, including environmental monitoring, analysis and assessment, disaster management, and spatial epidemiology. I exploited big data processing technologies and deep learning (DL) methods to extract information from the massive amount of spatial data collected for environmental phenomena. I have also been working on geospatial social media analysis using ML methods and am interested in exploiting new technologies like blockchain and distributed ledgers to tackle the need for security and accountability in the geospatial domain.

Currently, I am working in the following directions:

-          Spatial and spatio-temporal effects in modeling using ML/DL

-          eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)

-          Spatial data fusion

-          MLOps and automation of geoprocessing workflows

Organisations

• Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Department of Geo-information Processing (GIP)