Our Team

Jeroen Ticheler

CEO/Owner – Chair and founder of the GeoNetwork opensource

GeoCat was founded by Jeroen Ticheler in 2007. Ticheler studied Tropical Forestry at Wageningen University specialising in GIS and Remote Sensing. Following graduation in 1997, he worked for the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in Rome for nine years. Ticheler held various positions for the FAO in GIS/remote sensing and established the GeoNetwork opensource project. The FAO GeoNetwork is the first implementation based on this software, releasing a large quantity of geospatial data to the public. Today GeoNetwork opensource is accepted as the definitive open source geospatial catalogue application with implementations from smaller projects to national and international level catalogs.

José García Segura

Software Analyst

Jose is a software engineer who has worked mostly in geospatial software development, both with proprietary and open source software solutions. He started working at GeoCat in 2009, where he is involved in software development for several projects using GeoNetwork opensource and GeoCat Bridge. Jose is a core committer on GeoNetwork opensource. In his spare time he likes watching movies while enjoying a nice Belgium beer.

Paul van Genuchten

Software Engineer

Paul has been a software engineer in geospatial (web) development since 1999. Some statements that describe Paul’s passion:

• A fancy technical solution fails if it lacks a good interface.
• WMC & OWSContext are new versions of the traditional printed map.
• The concepts of Linked data might be able to finally cross the geo to regular ICT boundaries.
• Why choose Free and Open Source Software? FOSS is fun and as a manager you want your coworkers to have fun in what they do! (Paul Ramsey)
• Metadata without data is a shame, data without metadata is garbage.

Trang Pham

International Sale Representative & Customer Development

Enthusiastic and ambitious. Working in the hospitality industry for several years has enabled her to experience diverse and challenging roles with multi functional tasks that encompassed sectors ranging from front office attendant to supervisor going though public relation officer and on-line marketer. Being result oriented and out-of-the-box thinking, she thrives in competitive environments that gear towards outstanding business results. She enjoys writing, doing music covers, playing music and creating accessories.

Juan Luís Rodríguez Ponce

Software Engineer

Juan Luis is an Open Source enthusiast. He really believes that sharing our knowledge makes the world move forward. He has been working with open source technologies since he started studying at the university. At work, he has been developing GIS related projects since about 2006. MapServer, GeoServer, routing engines, PostGIS, etc. Juan Luis also contributes to OpenStreetMap, a free worldwide map everybody can edit and improve, contributing to Open Knowledge development.

Anton Bakker

Software Engineer

Anton has a combined background in urban planning and geo-information science. During his Master in geo-information science, he got fascinated about coding and software development, especially for the spatial domain. This can be the use of spatial data in decision support systems, or making spatial data more accessible in the spirit of an open web with open standards. Anton is currently working on .NET applications and web applications. Other things he likes are ultimate frisbee (yes, that’s a team sport), cycling on a classic Batavus road-bike and discovering new music.

María Arias de Reyna

Software Engineer

María became interested in Free and Open Source Software when she was studying at the University of Sevilla (Spain). She has been developing open source GIS software since 2007. Different subjects such as routing, real time maps and emergency systems have had her attention. In 2012 she started to work for GeoCat, focusing mainly on GeoNetwork opensource related development. Maria is a prominent member of the OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter and is actively working on the GeoRestless (GeoInquietos) Sevilla group.

Joana Simoes

Software Engineer

Joana is a software engineer and data scientist, with a strong background on geospatial technologies and algorithms. Joana was first exposed to Geonetwork, when she was working in FAO, and recently she joined the Geocat Team as a senior developer.

Throughout her career, she has mostly focused on customizing and applying Free and Open Source technologies to solve problems in a wide range of domains such as Smart Cities, Fisheries Stock Management or Disease Outbreak Modelling; she also enjoys coding low-level, generic, algorithms, and during her PhD she created a specific evolution of a quadtree for indexing vector data.Although Joana has accumulated a large experience with object oriented languages and relational databases, she is always interested in picking up new technologies. Lately she has been involved in the challenges of dealing with unstructured information, real-time or near-real time streams of data, and scaling systems to store and manage large volumes of information (Big Data).

Michel Gabriël

Front End Developer

Michel is a software engineer since 1997. He graduated in Tropical Land and Water Management at Wageningen University and soon specialized in GIS and started programming and building in ArcView Avenue. He quickly switched from desktop to online geospatial applications, having worked with Mapserver, GeoServer and OpenLayers. Being someone with a keen eye for graphics and layout he moved gradually to front end development. Michel always wants to make complex (geospatial) applications look simple. When he is not working he is either traveling, hiking or reading a lot of comic books.

Antonio Cerciello

Software Engineer

Antonio is a software engineer. His background is on web application development for large user base with particular attention to safety aspects and to performance. He worked with java technologies for the last 10+ years and he is still curious about the next youngster technology. He also enjoys writing stuff from scratch, but he’s absolutely not a hipster!

He also loves visualization-art and science and he is searching for ways to join his passions.

Jorge Samuel Mendes de Jesus

Software Engineer

Jorge has always been passionate about using Open Source tools and programming for mapping and real-life problem-solving. Despite his background in Agricultural Eng. His career has always been focused geo-informatics with a PhD degree in Geography and Sustainable development from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is a Python fanatic, considering that the Python mantras like “Simple is better than complex. Complex is better than complicated.” should not only be applied in code but also in system admin and personal life.

His expertises range from OGC web services (participation in the pyWPS project), XML/XSD, DevOp, Programming in Python and Javascript, Server administration, Service orchestration and now virtualization using docker.

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