Keynote Speakers

We are happy to announce that Prof. Anahid Basiri from University of Glasgow (UK), Prof. Grant McKenzie from McGill University (Canada), Prof. Heidi Kuusniemi from University of Vaasa (Finland), and Antti Vuorela from Helsinki Region Transport (HSL) are our confirmed keynote speakers at LBS 2025.

Ana Basiri

Dr. Anahid (Ana) Basiri is a Professor in Geospatial Data Science, a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellow, the Director of the Centre for Data Science and AI, and the Royal Academy of Engineering’s EngineeringX Champion at the University of Glasgow. Ana leads a team working on developing (theoretical and applied) solutions that consider unavailability and biases in data as useful sources of data to make inferences about the underlying reasons that caused missingness or biases. For this, she collaborates with world-leading academic, government, and industrial partners.

Grant McKenzie

Dr. Grant McKenzie is an Associate Professor of Spatial Data Science in the Department of Geography at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. At McGill, Grant leads the Platial Analysis Lab, an interdisciplinary research group that works at the intersection of information science and behavioral geography. Much of Grant’s work examines how human activity patterns vary within and between local regions and global communities. This has driven his applied interests geoprivacy and new mobility services as well as the broader role that geographic information science plays at the intersection of information technologies and society. Outside of academia, Grant has worked as a data scientist and software developer for a range of NGOs and leading technology companies.

Heidi Kuusniemi

Dr. Heidi Kuusniemi is a Professor in computer science and director of the Digital Economy research platform and the Kvarken Space Center at the University of Vaasa in Finland. She is also a part-time research professor in satellite navigation at the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute of the National Land Survey. She is the President of the Nordic Institute of Navigation. She has a M.Sc. (Tech.) degree (with distinction) from 2002 and a D.Sc. (Tech.) degree from 2005 in information technology, respectively, from Tampere University of Technology, Finland. Part of her doctoral research in 2003-2004 on navigation reliability was conducted at the University of Calgary, Department of Geomatics Engineering, Canada. In 2017, she was a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s GPS Laboratory. She served as a member of the council for natural sciences and engineering at the Academy of Finland in 2019-2021 and is a member of the Finnish Academy of Technical Sciences since 2023. She was a member of the scientific advisory committee for GNSS (GSAC) at the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2013-2020. Her technical expertise and interests include localization methods, GNSS reliability and resilience, estimation and data fusion, mobile precision positioning and PNT in the new space economy.

Antti Vuorela

M.Sc. Antti (Ana) Vuorela works as a Development Manager at Helsinki Region Transport (HSL). Ana specializes in development, digitalization, customer experience and research. He believes that one should listen to customers’ needs and work together with customers. Ana has over thirty years of varied experience in transportation. He oversaw the development of the Quality Monitoring System of Public Transport (Jola) which was the first modern real-time fleet quality operations management system in the world. “Expect the unexpected” is his motto. He has spoken at various world conferences.