At ISRIC, Ulan coordinates and manages SDI and GeoICT-related projects, serving as a link between project leaders and IT developers. Ulan also leads several work packages dealing with SDI design and deployments, such as WP6 in Soils4Africa and WP3 in DeSIRA LSC-IS Hubs.

Note: Ulan has been on long leave since September 2023.

Ulan has a Cartography and Physical Geography degree from St. Petersburg State University and an MSc in Geo-Information Science from ITC, the Netherlands. In 2013, Ulan obtained a PhD in Geo-Information Science from Utrecht University. His research interests are geo-visual analytics, analysis and visualisation of spatiotemporal data, time-series of sensor data and geo-web services.

Ulan started his career in 1996 as a cartographer in St. Petersburg, then continued as head of the cartographic laboratory of Kyrgyz State University, Kyrgyz Republic. From 2007 to 2013, he was a lecturer on the faculty of ITC, University of Twente in the Netherlands. Prior to Wageningen University and Research, he was a lecturer at Curtin University, Western Australia.

Ulan speaks Kyrgyz, Russian, English and Dutch.