As Director, Interoperability Programs and Science, Dr. Ingo Simonis, who is based in Germany, is responsible for planning, managing and developing architectures for interoperability initiatives such as testbeds, pilots, and interoperability experiments. Simonis has a long history of working in the OGC process as a member, and he brings those years of experience to this role.

Simonis has been a principal architect of OGC's Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) initiative. He was instrumental in the success of the Sensors Anywhere (SANY) FP7 project based on SWE. He authored several OGC standards and has been a member of the OGC Interoperability Program Team. He has served as lead architect for an OGC testbed thread. He has also served as lead architect for the GEOSS (Group on Earth Observation System of Systems) Architecture Integration Pilot activities, which are administered by the OGC on behalf of the GEO organization.

Simonis has led a broad range of international research and development projects and research groups. He co-founded the international open source initiative "52°North" and was the 52°North-Sensor Web community lead. In 2009, he founded with, Martin Klopfer (OGC Technical Director, Europe), the International Geospatial publications Institute, iGSI.

While pursuing all of these activities, Ingo Simonis has also had a distinguished academic career in the fields of ecology and geoinformatics. Most recently he has worked at South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and continues to lecture at Carinthia University in Geodata Information. His recent research has focused on the integration and analysis of complex data structures in the context of large-scale sensor networks. 

In 2010, he received the OGC Kenneth D. Gardels award for the extraordinary contribution he has made throughout all phases of the design, development and market acceptance of the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards.