Science team
European Space Agency
Cristian Rossi
Head of the Earth Surfaces and Interior Section
Contribution to Hydroterra+
He is head of the Earth Surfaces and Interior Section in the Earth and Mission Science Division at ESA. In his role he is working at the intersection of science, engineering, climate and sustainability, in support to existing and future EO missions, including Hydroterra+.
His activity focuses on remote sensing and Earth science, particularly the use of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and interferometric SAR (InSAR) for monitoring geophysical processes and environmental change. He contributes to the scientific development and exploitation of Earth observation missions, including applications for natural hazards, infrastructure monitoring, and environmental analysis.
Julia Kubanek
Earth Observation campaign scientist
Contribution to Hydroterra+
She is an Earth Observation campaign scientist at ESA. She works within ESA’s Earth Observation Directorate, coordinating and supporting field and airborne campaigns that validate and advance satellite missions and concepts (including Hydroterra+), including those of the Copernicus programme. Her scientific background is in remote sensing, geodesy, and volcanology, with a particular focus on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and InSAR applications for monitoring geophysical processes and natural hazards.
Andrea Sita
Earth Observation future missions system engineer
Contribution to Hydroterra+
He is Earth Observation future missions system engineer. He contributes to technical workshops and collaborations involving the European Space Agency and industrial partners. His work focuses on space engineering and technologies supporting satellite missions and spacecraft operations.
Politecnico di Milano
Andrea Monti Guarnieri
Full Professor, School of Industrial and Information Engineering
Contribution to Hydroterra+
He is the PI of the mission and he is the leader of the Hydroterra+ research team during Phase 0.
Hydroterra+ is a mission addressing key elements of the water cycle over land, providing observations of the hourly cycle over a wide regional scale. These elements are central for understanding of hydrometeorological processes and the surface energy balance, and they control impacts in terms of floods, landslides, and water availability for agriculture and society in general.
CIMA Research Foundation
Antonio Parodi
Director
Contribution to Hydroterra+
He is the leader of the Hydroterra+ research team in Phase 0. He has expertise in high spatio-temporal resolution atmospheric modelling. He is in charge of the development of the Level 2 integrated water vapour products of the mission as well as assessing its impacts in improving the understanding and predictive capability of physical processes underlying severe meteorological phenomena in Mediterranean complex orography areas.
Martina Lagasio
Researcher
Contribution to Hydroterra+
She is the Deputy leader of the Hydroterra+ research team in Phase 0. She has expertise in data assimilation and atmospheric modelling. She is in charge of design, implementation, execution and validation of the atmospheric modelling experiments for SO1 Hydroterra+.
They will be assisted in their work by: Massimo Milelli, Elena Oberto and Francesco Uboldi.
National Observatory of Athens (NOA)
Vassiliki Kotroni
Research Director
Contribution to Hydroterra+
She is the leader of the NOA Hydroterra+ research team. She has expertise in numerical weather prediction and severe weather forecasting in the Mediterranean region. She is in charge of the SO1 Hydroterra+ contributions over the South-Eastern Mediterranean (SEM) domain focusing on Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) with WRF model. Her work focuses on assessing the impact of Hydroterra+ observations on improving short-range forecasts of heavy precipitation and flash-flood-producing events.
She is assisted in this work by: Georgios Fragkoulidis, Post-Doctoral Researcher, who is responsible for the design of the OSSEs and the evaluation of forecast improvements and Dr. Antonis Dimitrellos, Post-Doctoral Researcher, who is responsible for the configuration and optimization of the WRF modelling framework and data assimilation experiments.
KIT
Harald Kustmann
Full Professor, Deputy Director of KIT-Campus Alpin
Contribution to Hydroterra+
He has leading edge expertise in impact of regional climate and land use change on terrestrial hydrology, dynamical and statistical downscaling of meteorological fields and fully coupled regional atmospheric and hydrological modeling.
He is in charge design, implementation, execution and validation of coupled atmospheric and hydrological modeling experiments for SO2 Hydroterra+ with focus on modeling and observation of joint water- and energy fluxes.
CNR-IRPI
Luca Brocca
Director
Contribution to Hydroterra+
He has leading edge expertise in innovative use satellite observations for hydrological applications including soil moisture, rainfall, river discharge and related interplay with flood, landslide, drought, water resources management, agriculture. He is in charge of designing, implementation, execution and validation of OSSE hydrological modeling experiments for SO2 Hydroterra+ with focus on water resources management, and irrigation applications.
ENVEO
Thomas Nagler
CEO
Contribution to Hydroterra+
He has a broad experience in application development using remote sensing technology for environmental monitoring. He has successfully led and contributed to contracts for ESA, EC, the Austrian Space Agency and commercial companies in the field of remote sensing, hydrology and meteorology. He is in charge of the designing, implementation, execution and validation of OSSE modeling experiments for SO3 Hydroterra+ with focus on the understanding of snow water equivalent and snow depth related processes.
University of Leeds and COMET
Tim Wright
Full Professor
Contribution to Hydroterra+
His research work is at the forefront of developing the use of satellite radar interferometry (InSAR) for measuring tectonic and volcanic deformation. He is in charge of designing, execution and validation of OSSE modeling experiments for SO4 Hydroterra+ with focus on answering a number of fundamental science questions associated with volcanic, tectonic and landslide hazards.
Technische Universität Wien
Wolfgang Wagner
Full Professor
Contribution to Hydroterra+
His research work lies in physical modelling and geophysical parameter retrieval from remote sensing data in particular scatterometry, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and full-waveform airborne laser scanning (lidar). He is in charge of developing robust algorithms for SO2 soil moisture retrieval (amplitude), taking into account instrument specifications and application requirements.
DLR
Giorgio Gomba
Researcher
Contribution to Hydroterra+
His research interests focus on SAR interferometric techniques for retrieving bio- and geophysical parameters, including the modeling, estimation, and mitigation of ionospheric disturbances to improve measurement accuracy. He is in charge of developing robust algorithms for SO2 soil moisture retrieval (phase), taking into account instrument specifications and application requirements.