Luis Manuel Vilches Blázquez holds a Ph.D. from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), with a European Doctorate mention and an Extraordinary Prize of Doctorate. He has held postdoctoral positions in three different countries and has worked under contract at six universities. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at UPM, where he previously held a María Zambrano postdoctoral research fellowship.

Research Areas. Spatial modeling, Spatial Data Infrastructures and Geospatial Web Services, Interoperability and Standards, GeoSemantics, Information Integration, Linked Open Data, Knowledge Graphs, ontology, Spatial Data Science, and Digital Twins.  

Publications and supervision. More than 120 contributions to his research line. His 19 JCR articles are distributed as 14 in Q1-Q2 and 5 in Q3-Q4. The impact of his publications: >1000 citations, h-index (15), and i1- index (27). He supervised 4 doctoral theses and is the supervisor of 3 in-progress theses. Moreover, he has directed 12 master's theses and supervises 4 ongoing theses.

Projects. He has led 4 Pan-American projects, 3 university projects, and 2 private contracts. Moreover, he has been involved in 27 additional projects with various roles from the European (3), Pan-American (3), Ibero-American (3), Spanish (11), and universities (3) calls, as well as private contracts (4).

Awards. He has received 4 international awards for several contributions from the Pan American Institute of Geography and History, the 25th European Conference on Advances in Databases and Information Systems, the Transactions in GIS journal of the John Wiley & Sons Editorial, and the I-SEMANTICS Conference. He has also received Spanish awards from the UPM and the Spanish Association of Telecommunications and Information Society Users (AUTELSI).

Teaching. >1500 hours at the postgraduate level in diverse official programs of different Universities in Spain (UPM), Colombia (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Universidad Sergio Arboleda, and Universidad Nacional de Colombia), and Instituto Politécnico Nacional (Mexico). According to the QS Latin America University Rankings 2024, these universities are ranked as: the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (#12), Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (#16), and IPN (#28). These universities are ranked in his countries as 2nd, 3rd, and 3rd, respectively.

Advisor. He has been an advisor of different public bodies in Spain (IGN and CNIG), Colombia (the Agricultural Rural Planning Unit (UPRA), the Department National Statistics Administration (DANE), the Bogota Spatial Data Infrastructure, or Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi), Chile (Servicio Aerofotogramétrico de la Fuerza Aérea), and at the Pan-American Institute of Geography and History (PAIGH).

Working Groups (WG). He has belonged to the WG of the Spatial Data Infrastructure of Spain (GTIDEE) (2004 - present), was a member of the Technical Committee for Standardization of the Spanish Association for Standardization and Certification (UNE) number 148 (AEN/CTN148) on Geographic Information (2009-2014), participated in various WGs in the International Organization for Standardization ‐ ISO/TC 211, such as the development of ISO 19150 (2009-2014), ISO/TC 211 ad hoc group on Linked Data (2011-2012), and WG7 Information Communities, Ontology Maintenance Group (GOM) (2011-2014). He is also a member of the WG on Geospatial Linked Data (2019-current) of the Superior Geographic Council in Spain. In addition, he is responsible for the Committee on New Trends in Geographical Information (2017 - present) in the Commission of Cartography and the Committee of Transversal Pan-American Initiatives (2021 – present) in the Commission of Geography at the PAIGH.

Activities to bring the science and technology over to the citizen. He is an ambassador of the Open Knowledge Foundation, where he disseminates knowledge and open data. He has participated in the organization of hackathons, talks, and outreach activities to promote his research in Spain, Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, and Mexico. Also, he is an active member of the community service students’ program in the IPN-México and Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Mexico).