Sara Irina Fabrikant (born 1967), is a Swiss geographer and geographical information scientist. She is member of the Swiss Science Council since 2016.

Private life

Fabrikant was born in

Zürich Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...

, Switzerland on September 27, 1967, where she lives with her partner.

Career

In 1996, Fabrikant graduated from the University of Zurich and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in geography, history and cartography. During her undergraduate studies she spent an academic year at the

University of Canterbury The University of Canterbury ( mi, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was ...

in Christchurch, New Zealand, studying

geographic information science Geographic information science or geographical information science (GIScience or GISc) is the scientific discipline that studies geographic information, including how it represents phenomena in the real world, how it represents the way humans unders ...

, and was awarded with the Rotary International Scholarship. Her PhD, which she gained in 2000 from the

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, and the University of Co ...

in Boulder, USA, was also in the field of geographic information science. In 2000, Fabrikant joined the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

in Santa Barbara, USA as an Assistant Professor in Geographical Information Sciences. After her return to Zurich in 2005, Fabrikant was appointed associate professor at the Geography Department of the University of Zurich. She has also headed the research group Geographical Information Visualization and Analysis at the university since 2005. From 2014 to 2016 she was head of the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich. Apart from Geographical Information Visualization, she has mainly contributed to the academic fields of Geovisual Analysis,

Spatial Cognition Spatial cognition is the acquisition, organization, utilization, and revision of knowledge about spatial environments. It is most about how animals including humans behave within space and the knowledge they built around it, rather than space itse ...

, Graphical Design of Application Interfaces, and Dynamic Cartography. Fabrikant and her research team have contributed to a deeper understanding of how the use of digital navigation systems influences the human sense of

orientation Orientation may refer to: Positioning in physical space * Map orientation, the relationship between directions on a map and compass directions * Orientation (housing), the position of a building with respect to the sun, a concept in building de ...

. Fabrikant served as vice president of the

International Cartographic Association The International Cartographic Association (ICA) (french: Association Cartographique Internationale, ''ACI''), is an organization formed of national member organizations, to provide a forum for issues and techniques in cartography and geographic ...

in 2015 and received the Michael Breheny Prize together with her former PhD student Marco Salvini for their paper "Spatialization of user-generated content to uncover the multirelational world city network". She has been a member of the Swiss Science Council since 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fabrikant, Sara Irina 1967 births Living people Swiss geographers Geographic information scientists