Prof. Dr. Pascal Neis (Photo: Svenja Schwerdtfeger, Mainz University of Applied Sciences)
Prof. Dr. Pascal Neis has been appointed to the Carl Zeiss Foundation Chair in Geo-Government in the Department of Geoinformatics and Surveying. With Pascal Neis, the university has welcomed back one of its alumni. Not only did he earn his Dipl.-Ing. (FH) and master’s degree in this department, but he also worked at i3mainz for nearly a year before moving on to pursue his doctorate at a research institute in Bonn and later in Heidelberg. “I am very pleased to be able to work in Mainz again. I’ve found a modern campus here, where some of my former professors have welcomed me as a colleague.”
Prof. Neis’s research will take place on various levels. On the one hand, he will focus on the further development of geodata infrastructures with an eye toward e-government at the various levels (global, European, and national). In addition to new questions and opportunities surrounding open government, he will specifically address current and forward-looking topics such as the open data trend in the context of geo-government. Prof. Dr. Neis also has many years of experience in research and development related to Volunteered Geographic Information and its applications. This aspect—with an emphasis on long-term quality assurance for open data—will be part of the research conducted by the Geo-Government Chair.
The term “geo-government” encompasses all IT-supported administrative activities in which spatial reference—in the form of geoinformation—plays an important role. In recent years, the digital workflows of administrative processes at the national and European levels have increasingly influenced administrative activities. According to various estimates, spatial context plays an important role in approximately 80 percent of all administrative activities. Current developments in the areas of standards, interoperability, and the provision of (geo)data will present specialized administrative agencies with a wide range of challenges and opportunities in the future. Prof. Dr. Neis will address these challenges as part of the endowed professorship funded by the Carl Zeiss Foundation.
From 2013 to 2017, the Carl Zeiss Foundation had issued a call for proposals for its program to fund endowed professorships. The goal of the program was to support the establishment of new, forward-looking areas of scientific focus by creating corresponding endowed professorships. Over the course of five years, a total of 20 endowed professorships at universities and universities of applied sciences were approved for funding under this program.
