University Jena

The Friedrich Schiller University Jena is a public university, one of the ten oldest universities in Germany (established in 1558). There are around 9,500 staff and 19,000 students enrolled each semester, of which over 14% are international, in more than 200 study programmes. Research at Friedrich Schiller University traditionally focusses on both humanities and sciences and three cross-faculty main profile lines LIGHT, LIFE, LIBERTY. Jena is successfully represented in the excellence strategy of the German federal and state governments with the research cluster “Balance of the Microverse”. The Friedrich Schiller University Jena is one of the seven partner universities of the European Campus of City-Universities EC2U, a multicultural and multilingual European university alliance.

The Department for Earth Observation of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena is anchored in the Faculty of Chemistry and Earth Sciences, one of ten faculties at the university, and belongs to the Institute of Geography. The department focuses on research within the framework of national and international research projects and cooperation with the aim to acquire, quantify and model the dynamics of the earth’s surface and to prepare the information obtained for further use.

The Department for Earth Observation is involved in 2 undergraduate studies: Geography (Bachelor of Science), Geography (Teacher’s Training “Gymnasium” and “Regelschule”), and three postgraduate studies and programs; Geoinformatics (Master of Science), Jena Post-Grad School Ph.D., IMPRS International Max Planck Research Schools. In addition to the standard educational offer of undergraduate and postgraduate programs, the department is actively involved in capacity building in remote sensing. It started the educational initiative EO College, a digital learning hub with many open-access training resources available. As for skills development, the department is a member of the Copernicus Academy, the Working Group on Capacity Building and Data Democracy of the Committee of the Earth Observation Satellites, and the SPACE4GEO – Large Scale Skills Partnership on Space Data, Services, and Applications.