Professor Arzu Coltekin
As for 1st of February 2019, I work at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland‘s Institute for Interactive Technologies as a Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Extended Reality.
Also, I am a research affiliate at the Seamless Astronomy group in the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics of the Harvard University in Cambridge, USA, which specializes in scientific data analysis and visualization. I chair the international Geovisualization, Augmented and Virtual Reality working group within the ISPRS; co-chair the Commission on Visual Analytics , and I am a council member with the International Soceity of Digital Earth.
My interdisciplinary work covers topics related to information science, visual analytics, visualization and cartography, virtual/augmented reality, gaze-contingent displays, eye-tracking, vision (perception and cognition), and human-computer interaction.
Prior to this post (between November 2007 and February 2019), I was a Group Leader and Senior Lecturer in the Geographic Information Visualization and Analysis (GIVA) unit of the Geographic Information Science Center at the Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Switzerland.
In my professionally formative years, I have received many individual scholarships and personal grants from international institutions including IAESTE, CIMO Finland, The Scientific and Technological Council of Turkey, Finnish Cultural Foundation, NRC Canada. In my later years, I was awarded various project grants, which are detailed on the projects page.
I (co-)organize conferences and workshops, and serve in program committees of many scientific events, including, for example, the ISPRS, GIScience, InfoVis, IEEE VisWeek, Geocomputation, ETRA, AutoCarto, ISPRS, AGILE, and the ICC.
I also have guest edited various journal special issues (detailed under publications), and I review for a wide range of journals and grant agencies.
I am an active member of several international commissions and working groups with the ICA (International Cartographic Association) and ISPRS (International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing).
I am in the editorial boards of several journals including International Journal of Geographic Information Science (IJGIS), and Kartographische Nachrichten (KN), and I review for various grant agencies.
I have delivered many invited talks at internationally reputed universities as well as large scientific outreach events (e.g., TEDxZurich 2011 on interdisciplinary science and TEDGlobal 2013 on women in Turkey).
Aside from my professional roles, I am the Zurich chapter lead for Turkish Women’s International Network, a network for professional women.
Before I moved to Switzerland, I was at the Geoinformatics & Cartography and the Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing labs of the Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University) doing my PhD (see my thesis on foveation for 3D visualization and stereo imaging) and teaching half the time; and later at the Media Lab of the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland as a post-doctoral researcher.
Prior to that, I was in Istanbul, Turkey; living, studying, working & growing up.
Architecture and Construction
Day 2 – Session 3 – October 29