Anita Graser is a Senior Scientist at the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Vienna, with over two decades of experience in spatial data science (since 2005), mobility research (since 2007), and QGIS development (since 2008). She has become one of the most respected voices in the open-source geospatial community through her research, software development, teaching, and writing.
Anita serves on the QGIS Project Steering Committee (since 2013) and the MobilityDB Project Steering Committee, actively shaping the direction of these influential open-source projects. She was honored with the prestigious OSGeo Sol Katz Award in 2020, recognizing her outstanding contributions to the open-source geospatial community. She also served on the OSGeo board of directors from 2015 to 2017.
She is the lead developer of MovingPandas, a Python library for analyzing movement data that has grown steadily since its first publication in 2018 with over 24 contributors. MovingPandas builds on GeoPandas and GeoViews to provide efficient exploratory analysis of GPS tracking data, sports tracking, and other trajectory data. Her related Trajectools plugin brings MovingPandas capabilities directly into QGIS, recently migrated to Codeberg as part of her commitment to hosting projects on European infrastructure aligned with open-source values.
Anita has authored several influential books including "Learning QGIS" and co-authored "QGIS Map Design" (with Gretchen Peterson), which have helped thousands of practitioners master open-source GIS. She also co-authored "Geocomputation with Python" (2025). As a teacher at UNIGIS Salzburg, she instructs students in QGIS and Python programming. Her additional awards include the Förderpreis Geoinformatik 2022 for the best Geoinformatics dissertation and the Nico Rüpke-Preis 2023 for the best review in KN – Journal of Cartography and Geographical Information.
