Open-Earth-Monitor Global Workshop 2025

https://brkljac.github.io/

Carmelo is a researcher at the OpenGeoHub Foundation specializing in forest ecology, remote sensing, and machine learning. His work focuses on large-scale species distribution modeling and the development of spatial decision-support tools for climate-smart reforestation and land-use planning. He has extensive experience with satellite data, high-resolution environmental modeling, and harmonization of large ecological datasets across Europe. With a background that bridges field forestry and data science, he contributes to EU-funded projects at the intersection of ecology, climate, and applied geospatial analysis.

Dr. Christophe Van Neste is a multidisciplinary researcher with a background in forensic DNA analysis, cancer research, and machine learning. He currently works at Meise Botanic Garden, where he integrates laboratory-based mineral analysis with Earth observation technologies to support traceability and regulatory compliance in agricultural supply chains.

With a long-standing interest in the intersection of ecology, data science, and international trade, Christophe’s path evolved from bio(diversity)-informatics into soil geochemistry. His work began focusing on remote sensing and open environmental data infrastructures, but the increasing urgency around land-use regulations—especially the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR)—spurred him to apply these skills in support of actionable monitoring tools.

Christophe played a key role in establishing an ICP-OES facility at Meise Botanic Garden, and currently collaborates with Ghent University on ICP-MS and isotope analysis of forest-risk commodities. His recent research explores the integration of spectral data and global soil models to estimate mineral baselines, with a focus on how post-harvest processing may confound or reveal key provenance indicators.

He is especially interested in how open science, harmonized datasets, and robust field-lab-satellite linkages can underpin the next generation of green supply chain governance.

Codrina Ilie is a technical geographer, an open source GIS/RS power user, actively working as a project officer to support geospatial data services development at Terrasigna. In her 15 years of activity, Codrina has essentially focused on using open source GIS and RS solutions for data management, processing and visualization. In the last 5 years, Codrina has been actively involved in developing geospatial services dedicated to the (re)insurance European market sector.
As an advocate for free and open source software for geospatial, since 2013, Codrina has been an OSGeo Charter Member and today serves the community as an OSGeo Board of Directors member, within her third term.

Lecturer at the Laboratory of Geoinformation Science and Remote Sensing at Wageningen University & Research. Research directions include global land cover fraction mapping and change detection in time series, big EO data processing using cloud infrastructures such as openEO, and sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence.

PostDoc at the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry

Daniel Thiex (Sinergise)

Predoctoral Researcher at CREAF and member of the Methods and Applications in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GRUMETS) research group. Her work focuses on the development and refinement of methodologies for high-resolution drought monitoring, with an emphasis on advancing the operational use of environmental data. This research is closely aligned with the objectives of the Open Earth Monitor (OEMP) project and highlights the practical applications of high-resolution Earth observation in sectors such as agriculture, insurance, and reinsurance.

Felix is a Geospatial Data Scientist at the Crowther Lab, ETH Zurich, specializing in remote sensing, geospatial analysis, and machine learning. His work focuses on global vegetation monitoring and trait mapping, leveraging Earth observation data to gain a deeper understanding of ecosystems and biodiversity. He holds a Master’s in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and a Bachelor’s in Environmental Sciences, both from ETH Zurich.

Francesco Leopardi was born in Assisi, Italy, on July 13, 1995. He obtained his Master’s degree in Building Engineering from the University of Perugia. In 2023, he began his Ph.D. within the International Doctoral Program in Civil and Environmental Engineering, a joint initiative between the University of Perugia and the Italian National Research Council – Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection (CNR-IRPI).
His research focuses on hydrological modeling of river discharge and runoff using satellite observations. During his doctoral studies, he has participated in several national and international conferences, including the EGU General Assembly 2024, EGU General Assembly 2025, and the Living Planet Symposium 2025.

Gregory Duveiller holds a PhD in agronomical science and biological engineering from the Université catholique of Louvain (UCLouvain), Belgium. After his PhD, he spent 10 years working at the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), in Ispra, Italy. He has specialized in developing methods to combine different satellite remote sensing data streams to better monitor and understand land processes, including crop yield monitoring, land cover change and land-atmosphere interactions. Since 2021 he is a project group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany. His main research aims at improving our understanding of the role of terrestrial ecosystems in the Earth System by using data-driven yet process-based thinking applied to satellite Earth Observation data. A key focus is on exploring the complexity and diversity of terrestrial ecosystems, and how their specific functional properties affect land-atmosphere interactions. Topics explored under this umbrella include: (i) improving estimations of carbon, water and energy fluxes; (ii) studying the role of biodiversity (specifically functional diversity) to improve ecosystem resilience; (iii) exploring the biophysical effects of land use and land management on climate.

I am a scientific researcher specializing in remote sensing, satellite Earth observation, geospatial data analysis, and GeoAI to support environmental monitoring, disaster risk assessment, and climate change resilience.
I currently work at the National Research Council (CNR-IRPI) of Italy, contributing to European research initiatives in environmental and Earth sciences.
I hold a Ph.D. in Geospatial Big Data and Geosciences, and I am passionate about applying advanced geospatial technologies to address global climate change and environmental challenges.

Research technician at the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF) in the research group of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GRUMETS).

Assistant Professor at the Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Perugia

Jaime Gaona was born in Burgos, Spain in 1986. Jaime has a background specialized in hydrology during his Civil Engineering studies from the University of Burgos (2013) and his M.Sc. in Hydraulics and Environment from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (2015).

Jaime holds a PhD supported by an Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate scholarship in river Sciences (2019) from Freie Universität Berlin and Universitá Degli Studi di Trento, associated with the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology (Berlin IGB), focused on characterizing and modeling the groundwater-surface water interactions (hyporheic exchange) using innovative measurement techniques such as FO-DTS and hydrogeophysics directed by Jörg Lewandowski and Alberto Bellin.

He started as postdoc in 2019 to study soil moisture and evaporation in the Spanish National Science Project HUMID devoted to the analysis of Iberian drought based on remote sensing and land surface modelling at Ebro Observatory with Pere Quintana-Seguí, while helping to lecture hydraulics and irrigation systems at the Polytechnic University of Barcelona (2020).

Jaime was from 2021 JCYL-supported researcher at the University of Salamanca, Spain, group of Water resources led by José Martínez Fernández at the Research Institute of Agrobiotechnology (CIALE), working on the analysis of soil moisture relevance to vegetation responses.

Jaime is currently research fellow working in soil moisture analysis at the Hydrology group led by Luca Brocca of the Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection IRPI of the Italian National Research Council in Perugia, Italia.

Johannes is a research associate at ifgi, University of Münster, and leads the air quality monitor within OEMC. His interests include spatial data science and EO for forest applications. In his PhD he studies wildfire hazard in Germany.

Postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF) in the research group of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GRUMETS).

Lorenzo De Simone, PhD
Dr. Lorenzo De Simone is a geospatial expert with over 20 years of experience in land cover mapping, crop type mapping, and yield estimation. He serves as Technical Adviser for Geospatial in FAO’s Statistics Division and the Agrifood Economics and Policy Division, where he leads the EOSTAT programme to modernize agricultural statistics and monitor agricultural resources and resilience using Earth Observations in over 25 countries. Dr. De Simone has coordinated the SDG geospatial programme at FAO and actively contributed to developing methods that support countries in using EO data for SDG indicator reporting. He also chairs the UN Task Team on EO for Agricultural Statistics under the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science.

I am a passionate junior researcher in VITO's Environmental Intelligence unit. My work focuses on the practical use of Remote Sensing in natural and urban systems. I hold a MSc in Bioscience Engineering, with specialized disciplines in forest, nature and landscape systems. At VITO, I am part of the Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) team, where I develop habitat prediction maps and support improvements to the data processing and workflow operations within Ecosystem Accounting (EA) projects. With my background in complex ecosystem dynamics via Earth Observation (EO) data, I am also involved in projects related to habitat shifts. Here, I examine the drivers of change and monitor the habitat condition.

Military-educated geodetic and geoinformatics engineer and junior researcher at the Military Geographical Institute in Belgrade and PhD candidate at the Faculty of Technical Science at the University of Novi Sad with expertise in remote sensing, SAR, digital image processing, GIS, geoinformatics and cartography. Passionate about combining engineering and research in both military and industry sectors, with a keen interest in the geospatial technology and the emerging field of GeoAI, leveraging artificial intelligence techniques to revolutionize geographic data analysis and decision-making processes.

As an engineer, modeler and data analyst, I am keen eager to learn and work on innovative methods for exploiting satellite observations for hydrological applications (floods, rainfall, droughts, irrigation, water resources management) from reigonal to global scale and reduce water –related disaster risks under climate change.

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Dr. Robert Masolele is a post-doctoral researcher at Wageningen University, specializes in artificial intelligence and remote sensing for monitoring land use changes with a specific emphasis on commodity crops. Robert contributed to various projects such as Transparency monitoring, Open Earth monitor, World AgroCommodities (WAC) funded by the European Commission and ESA respectively, thus, laying the foundation for his expertise in the intricate field of land use change and commodity crops monitoring. He holds a Ph.D. in Remote Sensing and Machine learning from Wageningen university (2023), and a MSc (2018) in Geoinformation Science and Remote Sensing from the University of Twente.

Simone Sabbatini has a PhD in Forest Ecology, obtained in 2014 at the DIBAF department of the University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy. His background consists in a BSC in Forestry and Environmental Science, and a MSC in Management of Forestry Systems, both held at the University of Florence, Italy. Currently he is a Researcher at the Euri-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC), where he is involved in the activities of the Ecosystem Thematic Center (ETC), a facility of the Integrated Carbon Observatory System Research Infrastructure (ICOS-RI). At the ETC he deals with giving support to the ICOS stations concerning eddy covariance (EC), air meteorological measurements, and file submission. He's also caring the in-situ Work Package of OEMC project (WP4), led by CMCC. Additional activities include support to PhD students, and involvements in ICOS-related projects (NUBICOS, NextGenCarbon)

Sindhu Kalimisetty received the Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from the Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India, in 2023, for the development of spatial flood early warning system
She is currently a research fellow at the Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection of the National Research Council (IRPI-CNR), Italy, focusing on improving the reconstruction of the hydrological cycle using satellite observations. Her previous roles at Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) encompassed developing spatial flood early warning system, Impact assessment of watershed management practices on catchment hydrology, and hydrological modelling for transboundary rivers.

Tom Hengl is director at OpenGeoHub. He has backgrounds in pedometrics, environmetrics and spatial data science. Tom is the PI of the OEMC project.

Trishal is a government and public services consultant. He works with central and state governments in India to engage with the private space industry, and also develops and manages geospatial solutions.

Dr. Vaibhav Kumar is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection, National Research Council (CNR), Perugia, Italy. His research focuses on diagnosing and monitoring hydroclimatic extremes—particularly flash and conventional droughts—through advanced geospatial analytics and climate data modeling.

He completed his Ph.D. in Geomatics Engineering at National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan), where he developed novel frameworks to characterize the onset, intensity, and persistence of droughts using multi-source observational and modeled datasets. His research integrates climate simulations, satellite remote sensing, and machine learning to support climate-resilient hydrological applications.

Prior to this, he was associated with the DST Centre of Excellence in Climate Modeling at IIT Delhi, and NARL-Tirupati. Dr. Kumar has authored peer-reviewed articles in Journal of Hydrology, Remote Sensing Applications, and Scientific Reports. He has presented at premier conferences including AGU, EGU, AOGS, and WMO workshops, and is an active member of EGU, AOGS, JSPS, and the YESS community.

His current work supports the development of integrated drought early warning systems and climate impact models for South Asia.

Valentina Premier received in 2022 her Ph.D. degree in Information Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Trento, Trento, Italy, within the Remote Sensing Laboratory and with Eurac Research, Bolzano, Italy, within the Institute for Earth Observation. Previously, she held a Master's in Environmental Engineering in 2016. Her activities focus on snow cover and snow water equivalent retrieval using remote sensing data. She is currently involved in different projects of the group for Mountain Cryosphere, such as SNOWCOP, Snowtinel and Open Earth Monitor.

I am a research assistant / geoinformatician focusing on lidar processing, machine learning on terrain and vegetation height modeling. I am also working on cloud-native vector data format and functionality development.