Ricardo Ruiz Sánchez

GIS Analyst | Environmental Scientist

Environmental Scientist specialised in Geographical Information Systems and worked as Research assitant at HeiGIT. My work focused on evaluating the impact of floodings on the road network connectivity and healthcare accessibility. During my Master (GIMA) I mostly worked in network analysis for my internship at HeiGIT using pgrouting (PostgreSQL) and object recognition based on foundation models such as SAM (Segment-Anything-Model) for my master thesis.

Short bio

Born in Spain, I obtained my bachelor’s degree in Environmental Sciences from the National University of Distance Education (UNED) in 2021 and started a two-year master’s degree in Geographical Information Management and Applications from the University of Utrecht in 2022 and finishing it in February 2025.

During my undergraduate studies I changed the direction of my bachelor thesis from analysing samples in a laboratory to analyse data from a monitoring station in Edinburgh due to COVID19. It was then when I started using programming languages (R) and specific libraries (openair) to obtain large amount of data guided by Fernando Follos Pliego.

After that, I started a joint MSc program of Geographical Information Management, spending time in each of the partners, University of Wageningen, ITC/UT Enschede, TU Delft and Utrecht University. I developed an interest for computer vision models and spatial analysis while working on my master thesis and internship respectively. I am extremely grateful to Manuel López Antequera for encouraging me to do this MSc and also for sharing me the contact of Christopher Beddow, who kindly recommended me to contact HeiGIT for my master internship.

Supervised by João Valente we submitted a conference paper along the master thesis that was graded 8.5/10. Similarly, supervised by Marcel Maurer and Monika Kuffer working in the Geoinformation For Humanitarian Aid team in HeiGIT we submitted a full paper for the Agile 2025 conference with the collaboration of co-authors such as Cristian Albornoz obtaining a 9/10 in the master internship.

These experiences made me develop a great interest on transforming data into information by giving meaning and context to take better informed-decisions.

Acknowledgments

  • How to create a quarto website (link) from Sam Shanny-Csik
  • How to add a blog section in your website (link) from Sam Shanny-Csik
  • How to Consistent Branding with brand.yml (youtube) from Garrick Aden-Buie hosted by R for the Rest of Us
  • How to design a personal website from looking at the repository from Ella Kayle, Mickael Canouil and layout from Manuel López Antequera.
  • How to add interaction with the audience from Albert Rapp using utterances.