Serena is Professor and Head of the Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology at the University of Pretoria (UP) and an NRF rated researcher (C1).
She started her career as a software engineer on the global software development teams of desktop GIS products. Subsequently, as director and project manager at AfriGIS, she led GIS projects ranging from geospatial data collection, manipulation and maintenance to geocoding, spatial analysis and Internet GIS until she joined the University of Pretoria in 2006. Her research focuses on the ever-increasing volumes of geospatial information and the management and governance challenges related to making it available, accessible, and usable. The research is interdisciplinary, mainly in GISc, cartography, information systems and technologies, and contributes to understanding and solving these challenges in the context of SDIs, based on open principles and standards, often at municipal level for address data.
Research Interests
- Data visualization processes for evidence based decision-making
- E-governance
- Geographic Information System
- Information management
Education
- PhD Computer Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa (2009)
- MSc Computer Science cum laude, University of Pretoria, South Africa (1997)
- BSc (Hons) Computer Science cum laude, University of Pretoria, South Africa (1990)
Appointments
- Expert for Data Sciences on the Resource Nexus, UNU-FLORES, since 2021
- Professor and Head of Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology, University of Pretoria, South Africa, since 2018