Myroslava Lesiv
Senior Research Scholar
Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group
Advancing Systems Analysis Program
Biography
Myroslava Lesiv is a Senior Research Scholar in the Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability (NODES) Research Group of the IIASA Advancing Systems Analysis Program. Her primary scientific interests include high-performance information technologies for ecology and environmental protection, crowdsourcing, validation of remote sensing products, synergy methods for land cover mapping, approaches to the creation of geoinformation systems for GHG spatial inventories at a regional level and analyzing GHG inventory uncertainties.She leads NODES research activities related to the validation of land cover and land use data derived from remote sensing, as well as the development of new methods to obtain data to be used as input for AI techniques. Through many years of experience with in-situ data collection and validation, and comparison of existing land cover maps, Lesiv has gained excellent knowledge in developing quality requirements, assessing quality of citizen science data and addressing data interoperability. She has been leading several Geo-Wiki crowdsourcing campaigns (e.g., field size and forest management) and a large number of internal expert data collections for various projects (e.g., validation of RapidAI4EO results, validation of WorldCereal products, validation of Natural Ecosystems map by the World Resources Institute (WRI), etc.)
Lesiv graduated from the faculty of Applied Mathematics at Lviv Polytechnic National University (Ukraine) in 2008, where she obtained her MSc degree in applied mathematics. She also participated in the IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) in 2009. In 2011, she received a PhD degree in technical sciences at Lviv Polytechnic National University. The title of her thesis was "Mathematical modeling and spatial analysis of greenhouse gas emission/absorption processes in regions bordering Ukraine".
Following this, she worked as assistant professor at the same institution. She taught graduate students in "Mathematical background for spatial modeling" and "Mathematical modeling of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the energy sector". From 2013-2014, she worked as a Postdoc researcher at the Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland.
She re-joined IIASA in September 2014, as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. She was awarded a Marie Curie fellowship to carry out research focused on the development of a spatially integrated forest observation system, from 2014 to 2016.
Last update: 04 MAY 2026
Publications
Zanaga, D., Van De Kerchove, R., Daems, D., De Keersmaecker, W., Brockmann, C., Kirches, G., Wevers, J., Cartus, O., Santoro, M., Fritz, S. , Lesiv, M. , Herold, M., Tsendbazar, N.-E., Xu, P., Ramoino, F., & Arino, O. (2022). ESA WorldCover 10 m 2021 v200. 10.5281/zenodo.7254221.
Van De Kerchove, R., Zanaga, D., Xu, P., Tsendbazar, N., & Lesiv, M. (2022). Product User Manual V 2.0. Worldcover
Moltchanova, E., Lesiv, M. , See, L. , Mugford, J., & Fritz, S. (2022). Optimizing Crowdsourced Land Use and Land Cover Data Collection: A Two-Stage Approach. Land 11 (7) e958. 10.3390/land11070958.
Jung, M. , Lewis, M. , Lesiv, M. , Arnell, A., Fritz, S. , & Visconti, P. (2022). The global exposure of species ranges and protected areas to forest management. Diversity and Distributions 28 (7) 1487-1496. 10.1111/ddi.13582.
See, L. , Laso Bayas, J.C. , Lesiv, M. , Shchepashchenko, D. , Danylo, O., McCallum, I. , Dürauer, M., Georgieva, I. , Domian, D., Fraisl, D. , Hager, G. , Karanam, S., Moorthy, I. , Sturn, T., Subash, A., & Fritz, S. (2022). Lessons learned in developing reference data sets with the contribution of citizens: the Geo-Wiki experience. Environmental Research Letters 17 (6) e065003. 10.1088/1748-9326/ac6ad7.