VIS in Earth and Space Sciences
Vienna International School of Earth and Space Sciences (VISESS)
Humanity faces grand challenges such as resource depletion, climate change, and insecurity about future energy supply. The mission of our Vienna International School of Earth and Space Sciences (VISESS) at the Faculty of Earth Sciences, Geography and Astronomy is to address these challenges through inter- and trans-disciplinary academic research connecting the cosmos with planets & atmospheres including its environments and with the anthroposphere. We aim our students to become world-leading experts in either of these three branches while also confidently communicate and contribute across all three branches.
Application language: Applications to this doctoral school must be submitted in English.
Update: The application deadline was 2 March, 14:00 CET.
You can still access your submitted application via the Application Portal.
Please do not inquire about the status of your application. All candidates will be informed of the outcome of the selection process as soon as possible.
Supervisor / Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
We are interested in how Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems represent, understand, and reshape geographic space and places. Our work studies how (geospatial) foundation models conceptualize places, how spatial and social biases emerge in their outputs, and how these model outputs further influence our everyday perception of the world. More concretely, we have worked on applying theories from cognitive science, e.g., prototype theory, as well as theories from knowledge representation, such as knowledge engineering, to uncover how generative AI systems form strong prototypes (called defaults) and how these may distort the representation of places and geography more broadly, e.g., in the context of urban studies or conflict studies. Aside from work on bias, we are also studying the alignment of AI systems, from a pluralistic and geographic perspective. Overall, we are interested in combining fields such as human geography and digital humanities with geographic AI (GeoAI).
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
Possible doctoral projects may examine how (Geo)AI systems represent, reason about, and construct geographic space and how generative technologies (re)shape our social, cultural, and political understandings of places. For example, research questions may ask how different types of data and model biases distort public participatory planning or how generative AI influences (local) tourism by reinforcing certain narratives at the cost of others. From a theoretical perspective, we are especially interested in how to make general AI methods and models more spatially-explicit, how to improve their spatial representations and spatial (e.g., topological) reasoning skills. We are also interested in doctoral projects that combine classical knowledge engineering, such as knowledge graphs (linked data) and ontology engineering used in geography and the digital humanities, with neural approaches such as spatial representation learning in GeoAI.
Weblink for further information: https://geographie.univie.ac.at/arbeitsgruppen/kartographie-und-geoinformation/
Email: krzysztof.janowicz(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
The spectrum of our work ranges from “prediction” to “protection” on the topics of (a) location privacy and (b) spatial crime analysis.
We examine the risk of re-identification & inference attacks, propose geoprivacy-by-design guidelines, and develop privacy protection methods.
In crime analysis, our focus is on spatial crime forecasting and also understanding how crime and safety are perceived in the urban environment.
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
1) Spatially Conscious Machine Learning
We are interested in engineering spatial features into ML models. These features represent spatial information extracted via various spatial statistical techniques that cannot be inherently captured by traditional ML models.
2) Spatial Crime Forecasting
Our focus is on short-term predictions in micro-geographies. In particular, we are investigating how open or publicly available sources of geo-information can help capture ambient population models that can either represent targets (i.e., crime victims) or guardians (i.e., mitigators of crime).
3) Location Privacy Protection Applications directed to Data Subjects
We are working on protection mechanisms that are designed to be used by the data subjects. Thus, increasing their awareness of location privacy as well as returning their control over the data they produce. This is in contrast to the mainstream research that offers solutions that can be “possibly” used by the data controllers.
Weblink for further information: https://geographie.univie.ac.at/arbeitsgruppen/digital-geography/
Email: ourania.kounadi(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Our inter- and transdisciplinary research at the Urban Sustainability Living Lab of the Urban Studies Working Group at the Department of Geography and Regional Research seeks to understand and foster Urban Sustainability Transformations.
To do so, it focuses on:
- Participation and social innovation in/through Urban Labs (Urban Labs are considered as social and physical spaces for co-producing knowledge and experimenting innovative solutions for urban societal challenges with multiple urban actors)
- Methodologies for collaborative learning and experimentation (transdisciplinary and comparative approaches, skills and methods)
- Intersections of the climate emergency, biodiversity loss and urban vulnerability (thematic core fields)
- Post-industrial urban development with a focus on small cities (thematic and geographical focus)
- Localisation of, and the role of urban actors in, global sustainability agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals (thematic focus)
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
Doctoral candidates are free to choose their own topics, and I welcome all proposals that fall within our broader research interests. However, I am currently strengthening our group’s expertise in the following themes, which means that aligned proposals are especially likely to encounter collaborations within our Working Group:
- Urban Labs across diverse geographies (emergence and functioning in different institutional settings, societal impacts, trans-local collaborations, etc.)
- New participatory (methodological) approaches for Urban Sustainability Transformations (including methodologies to co-produce knowledge across natural and social sciences, and with diverse societal actors)
- Intersectional approaches to understand and reduce urban vulnerabilities related to the climate and biodiversity emergency
- Social-environmental topics to link theory and practice of post-industrial Urban Sustainability Transformations
- Cities and urban actors in the “beyond-2030” global sustainability agenda(s)
In alignment with current research, we particularly welcome proposals focusing on cities in Europe, Latin America, and post-Soviet countries.
Weblink for further information: https://urbanlab.univie.ac.at/en/
Email: kerstin.krellenberg(at)univie.ac.at