Janja Avbelj
Photo: Fotostudio, Text: Kaja Stradovnik

Avbelj Janja

Alumna of the University of Ljubljana, engineer at the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). She works in the field of space technologies and remote sensing in Germany.

Dr Janja Avbelj graduated from the Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering in Ljubljana, and then embarked on doctoral studies in Germany, gaining her title at the Technical University of Munich. Even as a student she performed research at the German Space Agency (DLR), and later she was also employed there as a researcher.

She worked at the German Space Agency for six years. Her work included the development of methods for processing images from a hyperspectral camera which will be installed in the International Space Station, and she developed and operated a system of cameras on a helicopter and aircraft for capturing data in major events and disasters. She was a guest lecturer at the Technical University of Munich and a mentor for seminar and master’s thesis work.

Dr Avbelj then embarked on new challenges, taking employment at the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. There she is involved in the navigation and registration of satellite images for current and future European meteorological satellites. Her job is to develop methods for balancing all the image points in satellite images with the coordination grid and to ensure the geometric accuracy of the images. This enables the measuring of distances and the overlaying and comparison of images captured at different times and with different instruments.