Max Egenhofer

Overview

Dr. Max J. Egenhofer is professor in the School of Computing and Information Science,  a member of the Spatial Information Science Engineering faculty at the University of Maine. He has held a Libra Professorship at the University of Maine and was a Visiting Professor at the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, Brazil (2010), the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany (2004), and the Università de L’Aquila, Italy (1993).

Dr. Egenhofer has published over 130 articles in fully refereed outlets, among them the most frequently cited papers in four journals and another three conference series, including the most cited paper in the GIS flagship publication, the International Journal of Geographical Information Science. His work has had a huge impact on academic research and industry. Countless dissertations in computer science and geography have built on his research, several international standards have been formulated explicitly around his work, and a series of commercial GISs and spatial databases (by Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Intergraph, ESRI, Intelligent Spatial Technologies) have implemented his formalizations. In ISO 19107 the model of topological relations he developed have been termed the “Egenhofer operators.”

Education

  • Ph.D. University of Maine (1989); M.S. University of Stuttgart (1985)

Research interests

Dr. Egenhofer’s research interests include spatio-temporal reasoning, user interfaces for geographic information systems, the design of spatial database systems, and mobile spatial information appliances. Current and past funded research includes grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Federal Geographic Data Committee, the US Air Force Research Laboratory, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Maine Science and Technology Foundation, Digital Equipment Corporation, Lockheed-Martin Management and Data Systems, the GE Corporate Research and Development Center, Intergraph Corporation, Environmental Systems Research Institute, Space Imaging, and Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. He is the recipient of the 2002 University of Maine Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award and recipient of the 2003 UCGIS Research Award.