Since January 2018, I have been a Professor in Applied Digital Geospatial Research at the Department of Geography and Geology. Most of my professional activities are in the interface of science and practice and I have strong emphasis on coupling research with skills and competence development and societal impacts around the geospatial data, technologies and application in wider actor and knowledge networks. I am a head of UTU Geospatial Labs (http://geospatial.utu.fi/) and the UTU Tanzania Team (http://tanzania.utu.fi/), and one of the coordinators of Resilience Academy, a university partnership with the World Bank (https://resilienceacademy.ac.tz/). I am a board member in our university's strategic research and education profile "Future technologies and digital society" (https://www.utu.fi/en/research/thematic-collaborations-in-research/future-technologies-and-digital-society).

My professional career at UTU dates back to late 1990’s (MSc in Geography 1997, PhD Geography 2001, Adjunct Prof 2008). During my PhD, I specialized in combined uses of digital geospatial data in landscape change science. I started as the University Lecturer in Geoinformatics in 2002 and since then my expertise has widened largely on the issues of geospatial data analysis and applications, geospatial training and community cooperation. From 2003 onwards, I have been intensively involved in research, education and geospatial cooperation in Tanzania. In 2008, I received Adjunct Professorship in Landscape Geography. I have been post-doctoral research fellow at the Academy of Finland in 2006-07 and PI of two Academy Development Research projects (2010-13; 2014-2019). Additionally I have been leading around 15 projects with funding from the EU, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, The UN/FAO, The World Bank and private companies.

I am representing UTU in Finnish University Network in Geoinformatics (FIUGINET), in Finnish University Partnership for Development (UNIPID, vice-chair of the Board) and Regional Spatial data network for SW Finland (Lounaistieto.fi, member of the Board). I am vice-lead of the National Open Geospatial Research Infrastructure for Finland (Geoportti RI, geoportti.fi), which is the Hub for Finnish Geospatial Research and Education Resources.