Dr. P. Balakrishnan is currently a Lecturer of GIS and Remote sensing in the Department of Biological & Environmental Sciences, Qatar University. He received his Ph.D. in Geographic Information Systems (Cartography) from the University of Madras. His teaching interests include geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, database, GIS programming languages, cartography, quantitative geography, and geo-visualization. He supervises graduation research projects and also has research projects funded by the government. His research interests are in geographic information science and systems, spatial-temporal analysis, geo-computation, geospatial big database, land use and land cover classification, remote sensing and image processing, environmental modelling, web mapping and open-source GIS and cartographic representations, map animation, map visualization and social media. His research findings are published in various international journals.