Jan Van Sickle has many years of experience in GIS, GNSS, surveying and mapping. He began working with GPS in the early 1980s when he supervised control work using the Macrometer, the first commercial GPS receiver. He created and led the GIS department at Qwest Communications for the company’s 25,000-mile worldwide fiber optic network. He also led the team that built the GIS for natural gas gathering in the Barnett Shale. He assisted the supervision of the first GPS control survey of the Grand Canyon. He led the team that collected, processed and reported ground control positions for more than 120 cities around the world for the ortho-rectification of satellite imagery now utilized in a global web utility. He managed control for the BIM of the White House and the creation of the worldwide T&E sites for two major earth observation satellites (Geoeye I and Geoeye II). He conducted a spatial accuracy comparison study for Maxar in Durban, South Africa, Seoul, South Korea and Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. He has provided technical assistance in the reconstruction of the geodetic network of Nigeria. He has managed the gravity/magnetic and hyperspectral/multispectral analysis of Borzon VII a concession block in the South Gobi in Mongolia. He created an imagery-based system of deriving road centerlines that meet the stringent Advanced Driver Assistance specifications and developed a method of forest inventory to help quantify that depleted resource in Armenia. He has led nationwide seminars based on his three books, GPS and GNSS for Land Surveyors, Basic GIS Coordinates and Surveying Solved Problems. He has been a featured speaker at many conferences including GITA conference and the Institute of Navigation (ION) Annual Meeting. He delivered the keynotes at the 2010 ESRI UC in Imagery and Remote Sensing, the 2021 URISA/NSPS keynote and the 50th Texas Society of Professional Surveyors Conference. He was a Senior Lecturer at Penn State University. Jan earned his Ph.D. in geospatial engineering from the University of Colorado. He is a ASPRS Certified Photogrammetrist and Lidar Mapping Scientist. He is a licensed professional Land Surveyor in Colorado, California, Oregon, Texas, North Dakota, and West Virginia.
