Role
Full Professor of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) at the Polytechnic University of Milan; former Deputy Rector of the Como Campus of the Polytechnic University of Milan.
Bio
After graduating in Physics from the University of Milan in 1986, Maria Antonia Brovelli earned a PhD in Geodetic and Topographic Sciences from the Interuniversity Consortium of Milan, Turin, and Pavia in 1991. From 1992 to 1994, she was a researcher at the National Institute of Geophysics.
She joined the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1994, becoming an associate professor in 1998 and a full professor in 2010. In 1997, she founded the Geomatics Laboratory in Como. From 2011 to 2016, she served as vice-rector of the Como Campus.
She is a full professor of Geomatics and head of the GEOLab at the Politecnico di Milano, vice president of the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE), and chair of the Technical Commission IV "Spatial Information Science" of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) for 2026–2030. She chaired the UN-GGIM Academic Network from 2020 to 2024 and is a member of its Advisory Board.
His research focuses on geomatics , from early studies in geodesy and radar altimetry to digital cartography, GIS , and Earth Observation , with a particular focus on free and open-source software. He focuses on geographic data quality, collaborative mapping, citizen science, and geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI). He integrates satellite data and artificial intelligence to study land cover, air pollution, and urban climate, and investigates the applications of geospatial foundational models.
He received OSGeo's Sol Katz Award in 2015 and the ISPRS President's Honorary Citation in 2020.