Menno-Jan Kraak (1958) has a Doctors (PhD) degree in Cartography of Delft Technical University (1988). In 1981 he graduated in Cartography from Faculty of Geographical Sciences, Utrecht University (cum laude). After his compulsory army service (military geography) he started to work at Faculty of Geodesy, Delft University of Technology as (senior) lecturer in Cartography in 1983. In 1996 he started at ITC as professor in Geovisual Analytics and Cartography (as of 2010 University of Twente). In addition he was appointed as professor in New visualization techniques in Cartography at Department of GeoSciences, Utrecht University between 1998 and 2010. Currently he is head of ITC’s Geo-Information Processing Department.

He wrote more than 200 publications on cartography and GIS. His most visible publications are books on aspects of cartography: Cartography, visualization of geospatial data (with Ormeling) and published by Routeledge and Guildford Press (translated in 5 languages), Webcartography, developments and prospects (editor with Brown) published by Taylor & Francis, and Exploring Geovisualization (edited with Dykes and MacEachren) published by Elseviers. Recently a new book titled 'Mapping time, illustrated by Minard's map of Napoleon's invasion into Russia 1812' was published by ESRI Press.

He is a member of the editorial board of several international journals in the field of Cartography and GIScience (International Journal of Cartography, The Cartographic journal, Journal of Maps, Cartographica, Cartography and Geographical Information Sciences International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, Kartographische Nachrichten).

He has been board member and president of the Netherlands Cartographic Society and of the Society Geo-Information Netherlands (GIN). 

He is President of  the International Cartographic Association for the period 2015-2019. Before he was Vice-President since 2007,  National Delegate and has been (co-)chair of the Commission on Visualization and Virtual Environments (1995-2007). 

In the Netherlands he is chair of the board of GIMA (a MSc offered by the University of Twente / ITC, Utrecht University, Wageningen University and Delft University of Technology), chair of the Foundation Scientific Atlas of the Netherlands; was member of the Academic advisory Council of research program ‘Ruimte voor Geoinformatie’(2006-2010). 

He is Principle Investigator of the ITC research program Spatio-Temporal Analytics, Maps and Processing (STAMP) and member of the Twente Graduate School