Jan Wörner

ESA Director General
European Space Agency

BIO:
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Josef Aschbacher

European Space Agency

BIO:
Josef Aschbacher is the ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes and Head of ESRIN, ESA’s centre for Earth Observation, located in Frascati (near Rome), Italy. Born in Austria, he studied at the University of Innsbruck, graduating with a Master and a Doctoral Degree in Natural Sciences. His professional career in ESA began in 1990 as a Young Graduate at ESA ESRIN. From 1991-93 he was seconded as ESA Representative to Southeast Asia to the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand. From 1994 - 2001 he worked at the European Commission Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy, where he was the Scientific Assistant to the Director of the Space Applications Institute. He returned to ESA HQ (Paris) in 2001 as Programme Coordinator where he was primarily responsible for advancing Copernicus activities within ESA. In 2006 he was nominated Head of the Copernicus Space Office, where he led all activities for Copernicus within the Agency and with external partners, in particular the European Commission. In 2014, he was promoted to Head of Programme Planning and Coordination at ESRIN, where he was responsible for planning ESA’s Earth Observation programmes and for formulating and implementing programmatic and strategic decisions across the Directorate. He took up duty as Director of Earth Observation Programmes on 1 July 2016.

Nuria Oliver

ELLIS

BIO:
Nuria is Chief Data Scientist at Data-Pop Alliance, Chief Scientific Advisor at the Vodafone Institute and co-founder of ELLIS (The European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems). She was the first female Scientific Director at Telefonica R&D (2007-2016) and the first Director of Research in Data Science at Vodafone globally (2017-2019). With over 25 years of research experience in Artificial Intelligence, Human Computer Interaction and Mobile Computing at MIT, Microsoft Research, she advises universities, governments and institutions like the European Commission and the World Economic Forum on Artificial Intelligence and Big Data. Her work is well known with over 160 scientific publications that have received more than 18,000 citations. She is co-inventor of over 40 filed patents and a regular keynote speaker at international conferences. Since March 2020, she has been appointed Commissioner for the President of the Valencian Region on AI Strategy and Data Science applied to the fight against COVID-19. She is leading a team of over 20 data scientists who work on large-scale modeling to answer public policy questions. As part of this work, she has launched covid19impactsurvey (https://covid19impactsurvey.org) one of the largest anonymous citizens’ surveys to date related to COVID-19. Nuria is a Distinguished Scientist of the ACM and an ACM Fellow. She is also a Fellow of the European Association of Artificial Intelligence (eurAI) and an IEEE Fellow. Her many other honors include membership of the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering, CHI Academy and the Academia Europaea. She is a frequent keynote speaker both for technical and non-technical audiences. She regularly collaborates with and is featured by the media. She is very passionate about the power of technology to improve our quality of life, both individually and collectively. She invests significant effort in outreach efforts to make technology more accessible to non technical audiences and to inspire young people --and particularly girls-- to pursue careers in technology.

Peter Bauer

ECMWF

BIO:
Dr Peter Bauer is the Deputy Director of the Research Department at ECMWF in the UK and heads the ECMWF Scalability Programme. He obtained his PhD degree in meteorology from the University in Hamburg, Germany. During his career, he was awarded post-doctoral and research fellowships working at NOAA and NASA in the US and IPSL in France and more recently the German Helmholtz Society International Fellow Award. He led a research team on satellite meteorology at DLR in Germany before joining ECMWF in 2000. He has been a member of advisory committees for national weather services, the World Meteorological Organization and European space agencies. He is coordinating the European Commission FET-HPC projects ESCAPE and ESCAPE-2, and the recent ExtremeEarth proposal for European Flagships.

Eric Larour

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

BIO:
Eric is the project lead for the Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM), a state-of-the art-ice flow modeling software developed at JPL in collaboration with University of California Irvine. Its main goal is to model the evolution of the mass balance of polar ice caps (Antarctica and Greenland) projected into the near future (10-100 years), and to understand its contribution to local sea-level rise around the world.  Eric  received his M.Sc and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Ecole Centrale Paris. He went on to be a Software Engineer in the Mechanical Division at JPL, and for the past 12 years, a Scientist and then a Group Supervisor of the Sea-Level and Ice Group at JPL. His research interests include data assimilation of remote sensing observations into projections of ice sheet mass balance and sea level rise; forward modeling of polar ice caps using large-scale, high-resolution, multi-physics, multi-model based finite element ice flow models; development of high-performance parallelized computer architectures for modeling Cryosphere and Sea-Level processes, and technological developments towards better and faster outreach of state-of-the-art science to the larger community. 

Torsten Welte

SAP Industry Business Solutions

BIO:
Torsten Welte joined SAP Americas in 2004 and assumed the role of Global Head of Aerospace & Defense (A&D) Industries in 2015. With over 25 years of experience in consulting, sales, IT and program management, Torsten brings a depth and breadth of experience to the key leadership roles that he has held in the North American Aerospace & Defense segment. Under Torsten’s leadership, the A&D Team’s mission is to deliver industry cloud solutions that help SAP customers sustainably innovate and grow their businesses, operate safely and develop their people.

Prior to joining SAP, Torsten spent 12 years with Deloitte Consulting, managing several large SAP implementations as well as strategy engagements across different manufacturing industries. Torsten graduated from the University of Applied Science in Pforzheim, Germany, focusing his academic studies on the areas International Business, Organizational Design and Information Technology. He resides in Seattle, WA USA.

About SAP
As the cloud company powered by SAP HANA, SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77% of the world’s transaction revenue touches an SAP system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. SAP helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables more than 440,000 business and public customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

Grega Milcinski

Sinergise

BIO:
Born in 1980 in Slovenia, he studied Physics and co-founded Cosylab inc. at age 21, a company developing control systems for particle accelerators and large experiments in physics. In 2008 Grega moved to become CEO and co-founder of Sinergise, specialising in software for advanced geospatial applications, helping Europe to efficiently manage and control agriculture policy and introducing land administration systems to developing countries in Africa.

Gustau Camps-Valls

University of Valencia

BIO:
Gustau Camps-Valls (IEEE Fellow'18, IEEE Distinguished lecturer, PhD in Physics) is currently a Full professor in Electrical Engineering and head of the Image and Signal Processing (ISP) group, http://isp.uv.es. He is interested in the development of machine learning algorithms for geosciences and remote sensing data analysis. He is an author of around 200 journal papers, more than 200 conference papers, 20 international book chapters, and editor of 4 books on kernel methods and deep learning. He holds a Hirsch's index h=66, entered the ISI list of Highly Cited Researchers in 2011, and Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch identified one of his papers on kernel-based analysis of hyperspectral images as a Fast Moving Front research. He received two European Research Council (ERC) grants: an ERC Consolidator grant on "Statistical learning for Earth observation data analysis" (2015) and an ERC Synergy grant (with Eyring, Reichstein and Gentine) on "Understanding and Modelling the Earth system with machine learning" (2019).

Alain Bouquet

Orange Business Services

BIO:
Alain is Head of Space & Navigation activities for Orange Business Services. He is working at the crossroads of business and innovation, supporting the digital transformation of the Aerospace industry in Europe since 2012.Alain joined Orange Group in December 2000 and has held key leadership positions in Networks, IT and Innovation. In 2014, he created a first strategic partnership between Orange, Airbus, Telespazio and Météo France in order to define and develop a bigdata Earth Observation platform.  Previous to his position at Orange, he worked for IT Services companies where he was a software engineer, senior ICT consultant and technical director. Holder of a computer engineering degree at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts / Paul Sabatier University (Toulouse III), with a 14-month thesis in Artificial Intelligence carried out at CERT / ONERA in Toulouse.

David Moloney

Intel Corp

BIO:
David Moloney is a director of Machine vision at Intel Corp. and has worked in the semiconductor industry internationally since qualifying with a BEng from DCU in 1985. He has a wealth of international experience having worked for Infineon in Munich, ST Microelectronics in Milan , Parthus Technologies and Frontier Silicon. He co-founded Movidius as CTO in 2005 which went on to pioneer low-power embedded vision and neural network processing in edge devices before being acquired by Intel in November 2016. Since joining Intel David has continued to run a small team exploring next generation applications and related hardware as well as engagement with the EU H2020 HiPEAC NoE. David also runs Intel’s Edge AI incubator for start-ups and mature companies who want to build products based on Intel-Movidius Myriad platforms.  He received a PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2010 for his research into high performance computer architectures. His interests span SoC and embedded processor design, deep-learning hardware, computer vision, robotics and navigation.  David inventor of numerous patents and (co-)author of many conference/journal papers (Publication List https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WU3g6y8AAAAJ&hl=en).

Peter Platzer

Spire Global

BIO:
Peter Platzer co-founded Spire in 2012 with a vision to provide satellite-powered data solutions to problems on earth. The company’s audacious goal is to double global GDP growth by eliminating the negative economic impact from inaccurate weather forecasts in the era of Climate Change. Platzer is now regarded as one of the pioneers in launching small form factor satellites into space and was named by President Obama a White House Champion of Change in 2013. Prior to launching Spire, Peter trained at CERN and the Max Planck Institute before turning to business with the Boston Consulting Group in Europe and Asia, and serving as a quantitative investment manager for almost a decade on Wall Street. Peter received an M.S. in Physics from the Technical University of Vienna, an M.B.A. from Harvard, where he was a Baker scholar, and an MSc cum laude in Space Science from ISU Strasbourg. He also serves as a Career Coach at Harvard Business School. His publications and patents span Computational Physics, Nano-satellite Technologies, and climate change adaptation. He currently lives happily in Luxembourg with his wife Theresa, daughters Alex and Asta, and cats Wolferl and Nannerl.

Tapio Schneider

Caltech & NASA’s JPL

BIO:
Tapio Schneider is the Theodore Y. Wu Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at Caltech and a Senior Research Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His work has elucidated how rainfall extremes change with climate, how changes in cloud cover can destabilize the climate system, and how winds and weather on planetary bodies such as Jupiter and Titan come about. He is currently leading the Climate Modeling Alliance (clima.caltech.edu), whose mission is to build the first Earth system model that automatically learns from diverse data sources to produce accurate climate predictions. He was named one of the “20 Best Brains Under 40” by Discover Magazine, was a David and Lucile Packard Fellow and Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, and is recipient of the James R. Holton Award of the American Geophysical Union and of the Rosenstiel Award of the University of Miami.

Laura Moreno Patricio

Earthpulse

BIO:
Laura holds a Master’s Degree in Telecommunication Engineering from Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona and has done her master thesis at La Sapienza, Rome. Then she was working in ESA–ESTEC for two years, working in the S-1 team, but she quickly learned that her interest was on the applications side, products, market and users rather than in the instrument side. After ESA, she was back to Barcelona where she joined Starlab to create a Space Applications Business Unit she led during years and later on she became Space department Director. Then, after +15 years in the space market she founded EarthPulse, a start-up that co-design and co-develop socio-economical indexes based on EO&IoT data leveraging the power of AI to decrease the entry barrier and empowering final users. She occasionally works as a consultant for International Funding Institutions and she is also a mentor for 4 different SMEs not necessarily in the space sector.

Anniek Schouten

Overstory

BIO:
As co-founder and COO of Overstory, Anniek Schouten drives business growth and partnerships at Overstory. The Amsterdam-based AI company uses machine learning and satellite data to create actionable insights into forests and trees. The Overstory technology is used by enterprises such as electric utilities to lower the risk of wildfires and power outages. Their mission? Empowering better decision making about the Earth’s growing natural resources, by understanding every m2 of our planet in real-time.

Wendy Carrara

Airbus

BIO:
At Airbus Defence and Space, Wendy works within the Intelligence programme line where she leads the development of strategic digital initiatives together with European Institutions. Her activities cover data, artificial intelligence, platforms, infrastructure including Cloud, as well as the development of analytics to deliver value add services. Prior to joining Airbus, Wendy has worked as a consultant and spent over ten years facilitating and delivering complex multi-disciplinary digital programmes, projects and studies for European Institutions. In particular she has been the project lead for the European Data Portal on behalf of European Commission DG CONNECT from 2014-2018.

Sean Wiid

UP42

BIO:
Sean Wiid is the Chief Executive Officer of UP42. He has spent his whole career focused on geospatial technology and building digital mapping businesses. Prior to UP42, he was SVP of Platform and Content at Navico, where he ran the global map production operation and built the cloud platform team. At HERE Technologies and Nokia, Sean was responsible for strategy, business planning, and operations for the B2B business - helping to build and commercialize the HERE Location Platform. In previous roles at GDC (now part of Pitney Bowes) and Spatial Dimension (now part of Trimble), Sean worked as a software architect and lead developer building geospatial solutions for land administration, mining, and government. Sean’s strong technical foundation is underpinned by BSc and MSc degrees in Geomatics and Engineering, complemented with an MBA from the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin.

Michal Kawulok

Silesian University of Technology / KP Labs

BIO:
Michal Kawulok, M.Sc. (2003), Ph.D. (2007), D.Sc. (2015), IEEE member, is an associate professor at the Silesian University of Technology (Gliwice, Poland) and a lead research scientist at KP Labs (Gliwice, Poland). He has been involved in numerous successfully completed projects in both academia and industry, and recently he has lead projects related with super-resolution reconstruction of satellite images, funded by European Space Agency. He has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings on pattern recognition and image processing (see goo.gl/EvyBzo for a full list). His general research interests are concerned with image processing, pattern recognition and machine learning, with particular attention given to super-resolution reconstruction, face and gesture recognition, linear and non-linear dimensionality reduction techniques, and support vector machines.

Marco Esposito

Cosine

BIO:
Dr Marco Esposito is Remote Sensing Business Unit Manger at cosine and is managing director of Italian subsidiary coseno. Marco completed his PhD in Aerospace Engineering at the Universityof Naples. Having worked on various aerospace projects in Naples,most recently as coordinator of the Environmental ResearchAircraft Lab of the Italian National Research Council, Marco moved to the Netherlands. He worked at ESA as Optical System andPerformance Engineer consultant for the TropOmi optical instrument(UVN, SWIR), deployed upon the Sentinel-V precursor satellite in2017, as well as at the Science Payload Instrument Section in theDirectorate of Science and Robotic Exploration, on thecharacterization and calibration of EUV and IR optical benches, as well as sensor calibration for future interplanetary missions.Having gained experience as system and performance engineer,project manager, program manager and team leader at cosine, Marco became managing director of coseno as well as Remote SensingBusiness Business Unit Manager at cosine. Marco has been involved in a variety of research and development activities at cosine, all focusing on the miniaturization of optical instruments for Earth Observation and planetary exploration. He has led the development, demonstration in orbit and commercialization of the HyperScout® product series, the first ever miniaturized imager able to connect hyperspectral, thermal imaging and artificial intelligence techniques in one compact product for the Earth Observation market. He is the project manager of the ESA phisat -1 experiment.Marco currently leads the technical and business developments of the Unit. He defines the main remote sensing products, strategies and development roadmaps. He drives the development of the business cases in the space market and leads the technology development in the field of hyperspectral, imaging spectroscopy and lidars for space and aerospace applications. He has a strong passion and a solid track record in conceiving innovative solutions for remote sensing and in-situ measurements starting from application needs, and for the successful translation of ideas into nice, small and smart instruments mounted on airborne and spaceborne platforms.

Alma Cardenas

Microsoft Environmental Sustainability

BIO:
DAlma Cardenas, Global Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Environmental Sustainability Alma has over 20 years of experience in technology across multiple disciplines, including software development, consulting services, product engineering and digital transformation for businesses. Alma serves as a Global Senior Program Manager for Microsoft’s AI for Earth. This program accelerates innovation at the intersection of machine learning and environmental science, through grants, data hosting, and technology development. The team builds machine learning and cloud computing tools to advance conservation. She works directly with customers and partners to apply those tools to solve real-world problems.

Alma is passionate about using advanced technologies and drive informed decision-making across the globe for conservation.

Miguel Mahecha

Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry

BIO:
Current research Interests:

Climate extremes and ecosystem functioning:

• How do ecosystems reespond to hydometeorological extremes
• Detection and attribution of extremes in in-situ and Earth observations

Intrinsic functioning of terrestrial ecosystems:

• Empirical description of cross relationships in biogeochemcial fluxes (FLUXNET)
• Quantifying unconfounded sensitivities of ecosystem fluxes
• Performance evaluation of land surface models

Biogeography and ecosystem functioning:

• Value of macroecological approaches in the analysis of ecosystem functioning (incl. trait data, functional diversity)
• Role of plant traits and functional diversity in biogeochemical cycles

Methodological aspects:

• Time series analysis: spatiotemporal environmental data
• Nonlinear dimensionality reduction (e.g. for vegetation data, remote sensing data)
• Extrapolation (e.g. upscaling plant traits for Europe

Adina Gillespie

GHGSat Inc

BIO:
Adina is responsible for GHGSat business development and expansion in Europe. She also leads on European institutional engagement and strategic partnerships with the European Space Agency and others.Adina has nearly 20 years’ experience delivering programs and strategic advice in the application of Earth observation technology, including for governments and commercial users. For three years she headed the UK’s operational contribution to the International Charter for Space & Major Disasters, delivering situational awareness for the UK Cabinet Office and civil protection authorities around the world. In this role she also facilitated one of the International Charter’s first ever contributions to a national exercise – “Exercise Watermark” had more than 10,000 players, from blue light emergency responders to the Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBRA), and remains the largest ever peacetime exercise held in the UK.During her time with the satellite manufacturer, SSTL, Adina helped commercial customers define their Earth Observation needs for delivering specific services (e.g. infrared imaging for ocean plastic assessment, multispectral imaging for agricultural health assessments, and radar/optical satellite twins for security and defence). She served 5 years on the EO Advisory Committee to the UK Space Agency and chaired the Industrial Advisory Group on Commercial EO Regulations. She currently serves on the Satellite Applications Catapult Advisory Group, the Regional Catapult Advisory Board, the UK Space Growth Partnership and the Advisory Board to the Spatial Finance Initiative.

Guenter Doerffel

Esri Global Imagery Team

BIO:
Esri Europe Team / Esri Global Imagery Team

Technology Evangelist Imagery & Raster Analytics, Europe since 2017

Before: With Esri in Austria and Germany/Switzerland for 20+ years

Education: Engineering degree in Forestry at University Munich followed by a few years at University building/teaching GIS curriculum

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gd-public-profile

Manil Maskey

NASA Earth Science Data Systems

BIO:
Dr. Manil Maskey leads various projects at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Program at NASA Headquarters. Currently, Dr. Maskey is developing artificial intelligence and machine learning strategic roadmap for the ESDS program. At MSFC, he leads the advanced concepts team for the Inter-Agency Implementation and Advanced Concepts (IMPACT) project, where he develops innovative data-driven solutions to challenging Earth science problems. Dr. Maskey's career spans over 20 years in academia, industry, and government. During that time, he has focused on research and application projects in the area of data systems, machine learning, computer vision and visualization.

Joerg Herrmann

Capella Space Corp

BIO:
Joerg is SVP for Special Projects at Capella Space Corp. He previously served as senior business development executive at Airbus Defence and Space. He initiated the commercialization of SAR satellite remote sensing in Germany through the TerraSAR program and served as founding CEO of the TerraSAR-Xservices entity, Infoterra. During his over 30 years in geospatial and space industry he worked in system engineering and design, program management, marketing and sales, strategy and business development, and general management. In the recent years he developed strategic partnerships and conducted fund raising for innovative space initiatives involving SAR satellite constellations, and laser communication. His educational background is in engineering, business administration, and entrepreneurship.

Florin Serban

Terrasigna

BIO:
Florin Serban has studied Electronics and Telecommunications obtaining a PhD in Optical and Radar Satellite Data Fusion. He spent most of his 30 years career in geospatial technologies development, within the Romanian Space Agency, as Chief Technology Officer, ESA, as developer of GIS/Image Processing SW for educational purposes, and as founder and Managing Director of his own company – Terrasigna. He actively contributes to development of customized applications and technologies in response of the needs of national, European and international clients.

Johann-Dietrich Wörner

European Space Agency

BIO:
Johann-Dietrich ‘Jan’ Wörner became the ESA Director General on 1 July 2015.

Previously, from March 2007 to June 2015, he served as Chairman of the Executive Board of the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

Jan Wörner was born in Kassel, Germany, in 1954. He studied civil engineering at the Technical University (TU) Berlin and TU Darmstadt, from where he graduated in 1985. In 1982, as part of his studies, he spent one year in Japan, investigating earthquake safety of nuclear power plants. Until 1990, Mr Wörner worked for consulting civil engineers König und Heunisch.

In 1990 he returned to TU Darmstadt, where he was appointed as a professor of Civil Engineering and took over as Head of the Test and Research Institute. Before being elected as President of TU Darmstadt in 1995, he held the position of Dean of the newly established Civil Engineering Faculty. Jan Wörner headed the university from 1995 to 2007 and succeeded in making it the first autonomous university of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Jan Wörner has been awarded numerous prizes and positions, such as the Prize of the Organisation of Friends of Technical University Darmstadt for “outstanding scientific performance”.He was also appointed to the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and to the Convention for Technical Sciences (acatech) and is a representative of the Technical Sciences Section of the Leopoldina, the national academy of sciences of Germany.

Jan Wörner has received honorary doctorates from New York State University at Buffalo (USA), technical universities of Bucharest (Romania) and Mongolia, the Saint Petersburg University for Economics and Finance (Russia) and École Centrale de Lyon (France). He has received the Federal Cross of Merit (Officer's cross, 1st class) of the Federal Republic of Germany for his continuous efforts regarding the next generation of scientists and Germany as a location for Science, Technology and Engineering. He has furthermore been awarded the honours of Knight of the French Légion d’Honneur.

Jan Wörner was Vice President of the Helmholtz Association and also a member of various national and international supervisory bodies, advisory councils and committees. He was a member of the administrative boards of École Centrale Paris, École Centrale de Lyon, TU Berlin, the Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, the Arts and Music University in Frankfurt and has been a member of a number of supervisory boards including Carl Schenck AG, Röhm GmbH, TÜV Rheinland AG and Bilfinger SE.

Furthermore, he was appointed to the energy expert group of the German Government.

Before joining ESA as Director General, Jan Wörner was head of the German delegation to ESA from 2007 to 2015 and served as Chairman of the ESA Council from 2012 to 2014.

Pierre Delsaux

European Commission /DG DEFIS

BIO:
Pierre Delsaux is Deputy Director General at the European Commission Directorate General for Defence Industry and Space (DG DEFIS). After studying Law at the University of Liège, he obtained his Master of Law at the Northwestern University, Chicago, in 1983. He was Legal Secretary at the European Court of Justice from 1984 to 1987. He worked in the private sector before joining the European Commission in 1991. He started his career within the European Commission in the Directorate General for Competition. In 2007, he was appointed as Director responsible for regulating the financial services. In 2011, he was appointed as Deputy Director General with responsibilities for the Single Market in the EU. From November 2015, he was in charge of Space Policy and Defence.

Roberto Viola

European Commission/ DG CNECT

BIO:
Roberto Viola is Director General of DG CONNECT (Directorate General of Communication, Networks, Content and Technology) at the European Commission.

He was the Deputy Director-General of DG CONNECT, European Commission from 2012 to 2015.

Roberto Viola served as Chairman of the European Radio Spectrum Policy group (RSPG) from 2012 to 2013, as Deputy Chairman in 2011 and Chairman in 2010. He was a member of the BEREC Board (Body of European Telecom Regulators), and Chairman of the European Regulatory Group (ERG).

He held the position of Secretary General in charge of managing AGCOM, from 2005 to 2012. Prior to this, he served as Director of the Regulation Department and Technical Director in AGCOM from 1999 to 2004.

From 1985-1999 he served in various positions including Head of Telecommunication and Broadcasting Satellite Services at the European Space Agency (ESA).

Roberto Viola holds a Doctorate in Electronic Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA).

Florence Rabier

ECMWF

BIO:
Dr Florence Rabier has been the Director-General of ECMWF since January 2016. Her career so far has taken her back and forth between Météo-France and ECMWF.

Dr Rabier is an internationally recognised expert in Numerical Weather Prediction, whose leadership has greatly contributed to delivering major operational changes at both ECMWF and Météo-France. She is especially well known within the meteorological community for her key role in implementing an innovative data assimilation method (4D-Var) at ECMWF in 1997, which was a first worldwide and contributed to an optimal use of satellite observations in weather forecasting. At Météo-France, she led the research and developments linked to the use of a wide range of observations in the operational models. She also organised an international experiment involving a major field campaign over Antarctica, in the context of the Fourth International Polar Year (2007-2008) and the WMO THORPEX programme.

She has been awarded the title of “Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur”, and the Great Prize of the Air and Space Academy for the IASI project (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) and its atmospheric and weather applications.

For full list of publications, please see https://www.ecmwf.int/en/about/who-we-are/staff-profiles/florence-rabier

Paula Marti

EMSA

BIO:
Paula Martí is a project officer for Copernicus Services, in the Surveillance Unit of the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). She holds a degree in Telecommunications Engineering and also a MSc in Computer Vision. Paula has worked in the Earth Observation applications industry for 10 years and has experience in both research projects and operational services. Her initial area of expertise was land classification and after getting her degree in Computer Vision, started working on research projects using artificial intelligence for detection of objects and features in satellite images. Her work at EMSA mainly focuses on operational services, delivering near real time satellite data and value-added products to EU Member States operating in the maritime domain, and providing support during maritime emergencies, including response to major accidental oil spills and search and rescue operations.

Charlotte O’Kelly

TechWorks Marine

BIO:
Charlotte O’Kelly, co-founder and Managing Director of TechWorks Marine. Charlotte has a background in Oceanography and coastal processes. Since setting up the company in 2002 she has focused on developing the use of Ocean observing platforms in a range of different coastal sectors (Marine Renewables, Dredging, Aquaculture). In 2009 the company started working with ESA bringing marine spatial data to our client base, since then we have developed a team focused on EO within the company. This team is focused on developing Marine Earth Observation data services for Water Quality, Marine Renewables and Coastal Engineering. Since 2016 our team has been working on in situ Cal/Val of EO data and in 2019 we were awarded a Phi lab InCubed contract to develop a low cost cal/val data buoy linking both sides of our business. Charlotte is passionate about developing Marine Earth Observation data services into readily available commercial services, while ensuring the data is meaningful and properly validated, linking real-time data buoy networks using IoT fusing this with EO data as it becomes available following each overpass. When she is not working at sea she spends her time on the ocean.

Ruggiero Guida

Integrated Environmental Solutions

BIO:
Ruggiero Guida wants to change the way the built environment is designed and operated by advocating Performance Based Design. Supported by strong software knowledge and experience in the built environment Ruggiero provides quantified advice on buildings as well as master plans. Ruggiero has spent more than 20 years in sustainability and in particular in green buildings, from concept to construction to operation. Currently he is working at IES Limited as Chief Product Manager for the Intelligent Communities Lifecycle. He focuses on urban modelling, building operation and outdoor comfort. Prior to IES he was an associate at WSP Middle East; building specialist at Sefaira, a green building software startup (now Trimble); and a Partner at London based Max Fordham’s LLP. Ruggiero holds a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering and Computational Fluid Dynamics. He is a UK Chartered Engineer and member of CIBSE.

Xiaoxiang Zhu

TUM & DLR

BIO:
Xiaoxiang Zhu is the Professor for Signal Processing in Earth Observation at the Technical University of Munich, the head of the department “Earth Observation Data Science” at the German Aerospace Center, the Director of the international AI future Lab “AI4EO”, the co-spokeswoman of the Munich Data Science Research School (MUDS), and the head of the Helmholtz Artificial Intelligence – Research Field "Aeronautics, Space and Transport". The research of Xiaoxiang focuses on signal processing and data science in Earth observation. Geo-information derived from Earth observation satellite data is indispensable for many scientific, governmental and planning tasks. She develops innovative machine learning methods and big data analytics solutions to extract highly accurate large scale geo-information from big EO data. These show, for example, not only three-dimensional structures of buildings, settlement types, population density, but also their evolutions over time. Her team aims at tackling societal grand challenges, e.g. Global Urbanization, UN’s SDGs and Climate Change, thus, works on solutions that can scale up for global applications. Xiaoxiang is the recipient of, for example, the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis of the German Research Foundation (DFG), Innovators under 35 of Technology Review Germany, ERC Starting Grant, ERC Proof of Concept Grant, PRACE Ada Lovelace Award for HPC, Helmholtz Excellence Professorship and most recently the Leopoldina Early Career Award of the German National Academy of Sciences for "her outstanding achievements in satellite-based Earth observation for the assessment of global urbanization and natural hazards".

William Marshall

Planet

BIO:
Will Marshall is the Co-Founder and CEO of Planet. Prior to Planet, Will was a Scientist at  NASA/USRA where he developed a low-cost planetary bus, was Deputy System’s Engineer  on lunar orbiter mission “LADEE”, a Science Team member for the lunar impactor mission  “LCROSS”, served as Co-Principal Investigator on PhoneSat, and was the technical lead on  research projects in space debris remediation. Will has published over 30 articles in scientific publications including Science magazine  and he has written a variety of space related op-eds including in the New York Times and  Boston Globe. Will received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Oxford and his Masters in Physics  with Space Science and Technology from the University of Leicester. Will was a  Postdoctoral Fellow at George Washington University and Harvard University. Learn more about Will and Planet at www.planet.com and follow him and our Twitter for  updates at @wsm1 and @PlanetLabs. 

Michael Putz

Blackshark.ai

BIO:
Michael Putz is CEO and co-founder of Blackshark.ai. Born in Austria, he studied at the Technical University of Graz, graduating with a Masters degree in Computer Science under Professor Dr. Leberl, the founder of Vexcel Imaging and later Director of Microsoft's Virtual Earth. The success and impact of Vexcel and others in and around the vibrant geospatial ecosystem of Graz have inspired Michael early on, and ultimately got him started on working towards his vision of building a digital twin of our planet. Prior to Blackshark.ai, Michael founded Austria's largest game-development studio Bongfish, that has always been focusing on technology-driven innovation and ultimately lead to his current venture, providing a digital-twin of our planet as a platform that enables technology and innovation in countless industries, from earth observation, to autonomous driving, insurance and beyond, for customers such as Microsoft, Siemens and other global players.

Matti Mõttus

VTT Technical Research Centre

BIO:
Matti Mõttus is a Principal Scientist in the Remote Sensing team in the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in Espoo, Helsinki metropolitan region. He received his MSc in physics and PhD in environmental  physics from the University of Tartu, Estonia, in 2000 and 2004, respectively. He worked on the interactions between vegetation and radiation at Tartu Observatory, Estonia, and the Department of Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. In 2013, he started as an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, working on hyperspectral remote sensing of vegetation functioning. Since 2016, he is with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. Since his PhD, Matti Mõttus has been on extended research visits to the University of Adelaide (as a Group of Eight Research Fellow), Boston University, University of Zurich, and CzechGlobe Global Change Research Institute. He is a member of the Mission Advisory Group for ESA’s FLEX satellite mission and an official collaborator on EPIC DSCOVR vegetation products.

Chandra Taposeea-Fisher

CGI

BIO:
Chandra has been working at CGI since 2019, within the Earth Observation domain of their SatComs and Space Data Platforms department. She previously worked at an SME-sized EO Research and Services Provider, as part of the R&D team to manage and lead scientific/technical projects for the Space industry using Earth Observation (altimetry, passive microwave, SAR). Prior to this, Chandra completed a PhD in Marine & Numerical Geophysics from Imperial College London, and also spent a year at ESRIN/ESA in Frascati, working as a Young Graduate Trainee within Earth Observation.

Jean Dusart

European Commission

BIO:
Jean Dusart is a policy officer of the European Commission. In 2019, he joined the Environmental Observations Sector of the Directorate-General Research & Innovation, leading the EuroGEO initiative, the European contribution to the Group on Earth Observation. Previously he spent 15 years at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) as scientific project officer, with focus on geospatial technologies, the INSPIRE Directive, and the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region and leading the activities on the use of citizen science for policy-making. Before joining the European Commission, he held several positions in the academic area (Universities of Louvain and Copenhagen) and the private sector (ESRI). He graduated as a geographer from the Catholic University of Louvain, specialising in remote sensing, cartography and photogrammetry.

Luca Brocca

CNR-IRPI

BIO:
Luca Brocca received the Master and the PhD degree in Civil Engineering in 2003 and 2008, respectively. Since (2009) 2019 he is (Researcher) Director of Research at National Research Council, Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection of (CNR-IRPI) in Perugia. Luca Brocca is author and co-author of 140+ journal referred papers, his work has been cited 8500+ time, with H-index=47 with Google Scholar. Luca Brocca actively participates as Principal Investigator (PI) and co-PI to several research projects in the frame of Italian and European programs (LIFE+, HORIZON2020), and funded by International Space Agencies (ESA; EUMETSAT, and NASA). Among others, in 2012, he received the “Early Career Research Excellence” award by iEMSs society, in 2018 he has been the winner of the Copernicus Masters competition “BayWa Smart Farming Challenge”, and in 2019 he has been nominated “Highly Cited Researchers” by Web of Science Group – Clarivate. The main research interest of Luca Brocca lies in the development of innovative methods for exploiting satellite observations for hydrological applications (floods, landslides, rainfall, droughts, and irrigation). He developed the algorithm SM2RAIN, a novel concept for estimating rainfall from soil moisture observations. More information at:http://hydrology.irpi.cnr.it/people/luca-brocca

Noel Gourmelen

University of Edinburgh

BIO:
Noel Gourmelen is Reader in remote sensing of the Cryosphere in the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on the current changes affecting the cryosphere and the use of Earth Observation to make inferences about the state of the cryosphere. Previously, Gourmelen has been a Research Fellow at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) [2005-2008] and the European Space Agency (ESA) [2010-2013].

Robert Parker

University of Leicester

BIO:
Rob works for the UK National Centre for Earth Observation, based at the University of Leicester. His research focuses on understanding the carbon cycle. He previously held an ESA Climate Change Initiative Living Planet Fellowship and now works on evaluation of Earth System Models utilising Earth Observation data.

Bertrand Chapron

Ifremer

BIO:
Education
In 1984 finished National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble. In 1988 upheld Ph.D. thesis in Fluid Mechanics at Aix-Marseille II university.

Work experience

From 1988 held Post-Doctoral research at NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center and Wallops Flight Facility in the United States. From 1991 worked as group leader at Space Oceanography Laboratory in IFREMER, Brest. From 2001 worked in the European Remote Sensing Satellite center (ERS). From 2004 till present I'm senior scientist, head of the Space Oceanography Laboratory.

Research Experience

Publications in applied mathematics, physical oceanography, electromagnetic wave theory and its applications to ocean remote sensing, data processing. Over the last 20 years worked at ESA projects (ERS Wave Mode, ENVISAT RA-2 and ASAR, SMOS salinity mission), NASA and National Centre for Space Studies projects (TOPEX/POSEIDON, JASON, Altika, and newly accepted missions SWOT and CFOSAT). Potential future instrument are Doppler scatterometry SWORD and bi-static SAR interferometry.