Prof. Dr. Alexander Zipf, is a distinguished GIScientist from Heidelberg University, Chair of the GIScience Group and head of HeiGIT. He is a member of the Centre for Scientific Computing (IWR) and founding member of the Heidelberg Center for the Environment (HCE). His main research areas include Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), Crowdsourcing, Citizen Science, Analysis and Processing of Geographic Data, and Integrating new methods from Geoinformatics and GIScience in Geography. Before moving to Heidelberg he led the Chair of Cartography at Bonn University and earlier was Professor for Applied Computer Science and Geoinformatics at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, Germany. He has a background in Mathematics and Geography from Heidelberg University.