Ilya Ilyankou is a Co-founder and CTO with a decade of experience building geospatially-aware data products and full-stack web systems, currently pursuing a PhD in Spatial AI at UCL. He combines startup leadership—launching Safest Way, a personal safety routing app backed by Ordnance Survey—with hands-on engineering across backend scraping (Scrapy), spatial data pipelines, and interactive mapping front-ends (Leaflet, Mapbox). His work at organisations from Connecticut Data Collaborative to Geolytix has blended production data engineering with cartographic UX, and he contributes to notable open-source projects including alltheplaces and the compromise NLP library. Comfortable moving between research and delivery, he’s also an O’Reilly HandsOnDataViz author, signaling a talent for turning complex spatial analytics into usable tools and tutorials. An often-overlooked strength is his cross-disciplinary training—from studio arts to computer science—which informs his emphasis on usable, well-styled data visualisations.
10 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science - MS, Geographical Information Science, Master of Science - MS, Geographical Information Science at University of Leeds
University College London
Visiting Student, Computer Science, Visiting Student, Computer Science at University of Oxford
High School, International Baccalaureate, High School, International Baccalaureate at UWC Adriatic - Collegio del Mondo Unito dell'Adriatico O.N.L.U.S.
Bachelor of Science - BS, Computer Science, Studio Arts, Bachelor of Science - BS, Computer Science, Studio Arts at Trinity College-Hartford
Customize Leaflet maps with a linked Google Sheets template and GeoJSON data on GitHub
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Contributions:1 release, 90 commits, 28 PRs in 4 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Ilya primarily focused on enhancing the functionality and appearance of a Leaflet-based map application integrated with Google Sheets. They implemented several features, including the addition of custom icons, polygon labels, and polylines, and integrated a Nominatim geocoder for search functionality. The commits also involved improvements to mobile device compatibility, and styling refinements. These changes demonstrate a focus on improving the user experience through added features and design enhancements.
Scroll-driven story map, with point markers and narrative text in GeoJSON, using Leaflet and jQuery
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Contributions:2 releases, 45 commits, 19 PRs in 6 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Ilya primarily focused on enhancing the front-end functionality and user experience of the Leaflet-based story map. Their contributions included implementing image and narrative resizing, fixing iframe issues, and adding an "arrow up" feature for navigation. Furthermore, the user made the markers clickable, implemented a lightbox feature, and optimized the mobile responsiveness.
leafletreact-leafletscrolljquerymapbox
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