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Who we are

(alphabetical order)

Sara Basart


Postdoctoral Researcher in the Atmospheric Composition Group
Personal page
Interests: dust modelling and feedback processes, air quality, aerosols, meteorology, end-user products.

Bio: Dr Sara Basart (female) received a degree in Physics from the University of Barcelona (UB). She studied a Masters in Meteorology and Climatology a the University of Barcelona (UB). Dr Basart obtained her PhD degree in Engineering Environmental (Degree of European Doctor) at Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) in January 2012 while doing her research at different research centres (Centro de Investigación Atmosférica de Izaña, Spain, and Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, France). Her main research background covers mineral dust modelling, air quality and aerosols. At present, Dr Basart is a researcher in the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). She is the scientist in charge of the WMO Sand and Dust Storm Warning Advisory and Assessment System (SDS-WAS) Regional Center for Northern Africa, Middle East and Europe, and the Barcelona Dust Forecast Center (BDFC), hosted in BSC. She also participates in international projects like the International Cooperative on Aerosol Prediction (ICAP) initiative and ACTRIS (ACTRIS and ACTRIS-2). She is leading the BSC participation in Copernicus (CAMS-84). She has authored or co-authored more than 30 peer-reviewed publications in international journals and book chapters.


Dragana Bojović


Social Scientist
Personal page
Interests: user engagement and communication for better informed decision-making in climate change adaptation and environmental governance.

Bio: Combining her interest in global change with versatile experience in new methodologies and technologies, Dragana joined BSC to work at the interface between climate services researchers, providers and users. Dragana holds a PhD in Science and Management of Climate Change from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, a MSc in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford, and a BSc in Ecology from the Belgrade University. Previously, Dragana worked on various European and International projects on improving adaptation to climate change in different sectors, by overcoming communication and technological barriers that prevent effective use of climate and environmental information, including local knowledge. She collaborated with scientists, policy-makers and communities from Chile to Nepalon on the support of knowledge transfer, enhancement of the resilience to climate and other socio-ecological changes, and fostering of environmental governance. Dragana currently coordinates user engagement activities in EU funded projects PRIMAVERA, MAGIC and APPLICATE, and helps integrating the social sciences tools in the activities of the Earth System Services Group.


Jose Luis Cánovas


Journalist and Communications Manager
LinkedIn
Interests: Science communication, knowledge transfer, global health, climate change, clean energy

Bio: Jose Luis Cánovas has a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Communication from the Universidad CEU UCH of Valencia and Postgraduate degrees in Digital Journalism from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and Investigative Reporting from the Universitat Ramon Llull (URL) of Barcelona. With over 10 years of experience working in the media industry, international events and corporate communication, he has specialized in science, technology and health. As a science communication specialist of the Earth System Services group at BSC-ES he facilitates knowledge transfer to the media and society.


Chihchung Chou



Recognised Researcher
Interests: Climate prediction, Hydrometeorology, Land-atmosphere interaction, Agricultural and water management

Bio: Chihchung Chou used to work on the relationship between the algal bloom of surface water bodies such as lakes and reservoirs and the varying characteristics of the water environment during his Master's degree of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the National Taiwan University in Taiwan. His PhD research aimed at improving the understanding of the effect of large-scale agricultural irrigation on the monsoonal rain as well as the resulting potential feedback mechanisms of the land-atmosphere interaction behind. After the completion of his PhD at the University of Melbourne, Australia, he joined the Earth System Services Group in Oct 2019, and he will work on the seasonal climate prediction relating to the agricultural and water management in Barcelona.


Konstantina Chouta

Master Student
Personal page
Interests: air quality, mineral dust, science communication, end-user products

Bio: Konstantina holds a BSc in Physics from the University of Athens and a MSc in Environmental Engineering from the UPC (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya). She joined the BSC in October 2019 to conduct her Master Thesis entitled “Impact Assessment of Sand and Dust Storms on key socio-economic sectors: Aviation”. Since then, she forms part of the ESS group and the Knowledge Transfer team and she is working in projects related to air quality, as well as to the re-design of operational services (Barcelona Dust Regional Center, CALIOPE).


Marina Conde Ramos


Research Engineer
LinkedIn

Interests: Software Engineering, Software Quality, Agile methodologies, User Experience, Data Management, Data Mining, Machine Learning and Python.

Bio: Marina Conde received a degree in Informatics Engineering from Polytechnic University of Catalonia in 2012. She has working experience as a Software Engineer in the area of Business Intelligence Reports, among others. Her main role at the Earth System Services group (ESS-BSC) is to work on the creation and improvement of the operational services websites.


Nicola Cortesi


Postdoctoral Researcher
Personal page
Interests: understanding, validating and forecasting the main modes of atmospheric variability at sub-seasonal and seasonal time scale, to develop tailored products for the energy sector.

Bio: Dr.Nicola Cortesi holds a degree in Atmospheric Physics at Milan University, a M.Sc. on Geographic Information Systems and interpolation techniques and an international Ph.D on modelling precipitation and temperature variability. As postdoctoral, he focused on statistical downscaling at CERFACS (MeteoFrance), on multi-model ensemble evaluation at IC3 (Barcelona) and on validation of S2S forecasts at BSC. He has a 10-years experience in handling, analysing, assessing and visualizing large global and regional climate simulations and a 5-years experience in verification of S2S forecasting systems. He contributed to various national and European projects (FORALPS, SPECS, COST, RESILIENCE, NEWA, SECTEUR, S2S4E).


Pep Cos


Master Student
Interests: Climate prediction, climate variability, modelling, wind power, aerodynamics

Bio: Pep Cos has a bachelors degree in Aerospace Engineering from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Currently, he is doing a master degree in Meteorology at Universitat de Barcelona and it's internship is developing at BSC. He will be studying the impacts that future projections of climate change in the Mediterranean region could imply.


Carlos Delgado-Torres


PhD student

Interests: Climate prediction, Climate Services, Weather regimes, Software development, Artificial Intelligence, Numerical weather prediction.

Bio: Carlos Delgado holds a BSc in Physics and a MSc in Meteorology and Geophysics from the Complutense University of Madrid. During his years at the university, he did internships at the Agencia Estatal de Meteorología (AEMET), Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA) and eltiempo.es. He joined the BSC in June 2019 to do his Master's thesis on the predictability of Euro-Atlantic weather regimes on inter-annual to decadal timescales. After finishing the MSc, he was working as a software developer for some months in the private sector before coming back to the BSC. Carlos has joined the Earth System Services and Climate Prediction groups, and will be working on EUCP and Copernicus C3S projects while developing his PhD on decadal prediction and predictability for energy production.


Nube Gonzalez-Reviriego


Postdoctoral Researcher

Interests: Research ​on climate services tailored ​to different sectors such as renewable energy, agriculture ​and food security. Seasonal forecast quality assessment. Teleconnection ​patterns ​and weather regimes. Climate projections. Development of novel strategies to better communicate research results to the end users.

Bio: Dr. Nube Gonzalez received a degree in Physics from the University of Salamanca (USAL). She studied a Masters in Meteorology and Climatology at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) under a fellowship from “la Caixa” Foundation. She joined the Climate Investigation and Application Group (GICA) of the USAL under a FPI fellowship, where she holds an international PhD in “Research and Development of Geotechnologies” in year 2015. Her Doctoral Thesis, entitled “Evaluación de las teleconexiones climáticas observadas y simuladas con modelos de CMIP en la región Euro-Atlántica” focus on Northern Hemisphere Teleconnections with outputs of Global Climate Models (GCM ́s) from CMIP3 and CMIP5 datasets under different emission scenarios and comparison with Re-analysis data. In year 2013 she started to work at Institut Català de Ciències del Clima (IC3) in the Climate Forecasting Unit (CFU) where she was involved in the development and communication of climate services for energy. Currently, she is leading the Climate Services team (consisting of 10 people) within the Earth System Services Group at BSC. Her expertise lies in sub-seasonal, seasonal and decadal climate predictions for the development of climate services tailored to sectoral needs of different sectors: agriculture, renewable energy, water management and retail. She is an expert on co-development and capacity building in the context of climate services. She has participated in ten European projects (MED-GOLD, S2S4E, FOCUS, VITIGEOSS, EUCP, VISCA, INDECIS, IMPREX, SPECS and EUPORIAS), six Spanish projects, one cooperation project and four private contracts (C3S and private companies). She has supervised MSc and PhD students and has experience teaching at university.


Marc Guevara


Postdoctoral Researcher

Interests: emissions, geographic information system, air quality modelling

Bio: Dr. Marc Guevara holds B.S. in Industrial Engineering (Technical University of Catalonia, Spain, October 2010) and PhD in Environmental Engineering (Technical University of Catalonia, Spain, December 2014). He is a postdoc researcher with 6 years’ experience in the areas of Emissions and Air Quality. His main expertise includes high resolution emission modelling (development, evaluation and improvement), air quality modelling, geographic information systems and environmental impact assessment. He is co-chair of the Emissions Working Group of the FAIRMODE community. He coordinated the development and implementation of an air quality forecast system for the Mexico City's Environment Secretary. He has participated in the Spanish air quality-related CALIOPE-And project and the FP7 Framework programme APPRAISAL, as well as in several national technology transfer projects related with air quality impact assessment. He has participated in capacity building and transfer of knowledge activities with technical people of the Environmental Ministry of Turkey (period of Execution: Jun 2013). He has coauthored 13 papers in international scientific journals and 8 communications to International conferences.


Isadora Jiménez


Science communication specialist

Bio: Dr Isadora Christel Jiménez has a Master’s degree in Science communication (IDEC-UPF) and a PhD in offshore wind energy Impact assessment from the University of Barcelona. She has eight years of research experience in direct contact with stakeholders and five years working on science communication. As a science communication specialist of the Earth System Services group at BSC-ES she facilitates knowledge and technology transfer to end users. She is currently involved in EU funded projects in dissemination actions, user-engagement activities and the interaction with stakeholders to promote the integration of seasonal-to-decadal climate predictions in different economic sectors. She is Work Package leader within EUPORIAS and PRIMAVERA and she is also involved in user engagement and dissemination Work Packages in IMPREX, SPECS, ClimatEurope and CLIM4ENERGY.


Eleni Karnezi

Llorenç Lledó Ponsati

Senior researcher and PhD student
Personal page
Interests: Climate Services for Renewable Energy, Wind Resource Assessment, Wind Power Forecasting, Numerical Weather Prediction, Reanalysis, Dynamical downscaling, Bias correction and statistical downscaling, Climate Projections, Weather Routing.

Bio: Llorenç Lledó holds a BSc in Mathematics and a MSc in Meteorology. During the last decade he has worked on applications of Numerical Weather Prediction to the industry. More specifically, during the last 7 years he has focused on applications for the wind industry, specialising on Wind Resource Assessment and Wind Power Forecasting. At BSC, his work focuses on the CLIM4ENERGY project, a C3S service prototype delivering seasonal predictions of wind and capacity factor for the energy sector. Llorenç is pursuing a PhD on physics at University of Barcelona. On his free time, Llorenç loves sailing and enjoying the wind from another perspective.


Andrea Manrique-Suñén

Postdoctoral researcher
Interests: Sub-seasonal forecast quality assessment, land surface modelling, hydrology, vegetation modelling, climate-carbon cycle feedback.

Bio: Dr. Andrea Manrique-Suñén has a degree in Physics from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, with specialisation in atmospheric physics. She holds a PhD in Meteorology from the University of Reading, UK. She has expertise in land surface models, particularly on the role of the vegetation in the exchange of CO2 and energy fluxes. Her doctoral thesis is entitled: “The treatment of vegetation in land surface models: implications for predictions of land-atmosphere exchange” were the modelled effects of changes in environmental variables on the carbon and energy exchange are analysed. In BSC she is working with sub-seasonal climate predictions, ranging from one week to under a season. This work involves performing forecast quality assessments, bias adjustment methods as well as the operational implementation of sub-seasonal predictions. She is involved in the IMPREX project, performing a quality assessment of hydro-meteorological variables at sub-seasonal timescales. She also works for the S2S4E project (sub-seasonal to seasonal climate predictions for the energy sector) in the sub-seasonal timescale.


Raül Marcos


Postdoctoral researcher
Personal page
Interests: assessment and improvement of seasonal climate predictability for the development of climate and atmospheric services in different sectors (renewable energies, water resource management, forest fire prevention, agriculture and food security, insurance, urban development and smartcities). Development of novel strategies to better communicate research results to the end users.

Bio: Dr Raül Marcos Matamoros has a Master’s degree in Meteorology and an international PhD in Physics from the University of Barcelona (UB). He joined the Meteorological Hazards Analysis Team (GAMA) in the UB in 2010 and was awarded a FPU fellowship to develop his PhD. His Doctoral Thesis, entitled “Improvement of seasonal forecasting techniques applied to water resources and forest fires” is focused on the study of the performance of ECMWF System-4 and two of its potential applications: water resource management and forest fire prevention. In year 2016 he started working at the Earth System Services group at the BSC where he is involved in the study of seasonal forecasting models, improvement of their predictability, and the development of climate services for the renewable energy sector. He has been involved in national and EU funded projects (i.e. RESILIENCE, ESTCENA, DRIHM…) and in the interaction with stakeholders to promote the integration of seasonal climate predictions in different economic sectors.


Sara Octenjak


Albert Martínez Botí


Master Student
Interests: Climate prediction, climate variability, modelling, numerical weather prediction, extreme events.

Bio: Albert Martinez holds a BSc in physics from the University of Valencia. He's currently doing a master's degree in Meteorology at Universitat de Barcelona and an internship at BSC. He will be working on the project of seasonal and sub-seasonal forecasting for Decathlon.


Jan Mateu Armengol

Postdoctoral Researcher STARS Fellow

Interests: urban air quality modelling, uncertainty quantification (UQ), data assimilation (DA).

Bio: Jan’s research focuses on urban air quality modelling with emphasis in uncertainty quantification and data assimilation. He has expertise in the numerical computation of turbulent flows and thermal radiation transport. Jan holds a Bachelor degree in Industrial Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain, 2013). He obtained a MSc. degree in numerical heat transfer and fluid flow by the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brazil, 2015). After receiving his joint-PhD degree in mechanical engineering from both the Universidade Estadual de Campinas and the École Centrale Paris (France, 2019), he collaborated with L’École Polytechnique (France, 2020) as a postdoctoral researcher working on Bayesian inference and uncertainty quantification on reduced chemical schemes. Jan joined the Atmospheric composition group, as well as the Earth System Services group to apply uncertainty quantification and data assimilation methodologies to urban air quality simulations.


Andria Nicodemou


Science communication

Interests: Climate change, air quality, zero waste, clean energy

Bio: Andria Nicodemou holds a BSc in Chemistry from the University of Bath (UK) and a Master of Research in Earth System Science from the University of Bristol (UK). She has worked in science publishing in Cambridge and London for five years, and later as a freelance science editor and writer based in Barcelona. She has experience working in journals and papers in several fields, including environmental science, geoscience, chemistry, biomedical and pharmaceutical research. She also has experience in community engagement projects to raise environmental awareness in London and Barcelona. Andria has joined the knowledge transfer team of the Earth System Services group, and will be working on projects including EVIDENCECity, 4C and S2S4E.


Herve Petetin


Postdoctoral Researcher
STARS Fellow

Interests: air quality, aerosols, ozone, emissions, biomass burning, pollution long-range transport, pollution vertical distribution, trend analysis, boundary layer dynamics, machine learning.

Bio: Dr. Herve Petetin holds an engineering diploma from the Ecole Centrale de Lille (ECL, France, 2008), a M.Sc. in Mechanics and fluid dynamics from the University of Science and Technology Lille 1 (USTL, France, 2009), a M.Sc. in Atmospheric physics and chemistry from the University of Paris Est Creteil (UPEC, France, 2010) and a Ph.D. in Atmospheric physics and chemistry from the University of Paris Diderot (UPD, France, 2014). His doctoral thesis, entitled “Fine aerosol in a European megacity – Simulation of the sources”, was conducted at the Laboratoire Inter-universitaire des Systemes Atmospheriques (LISA, France) and AIRPARIF, the local agency in charge of monitoring and forecasting the air quality in the Paris region. Utilizing both detailed in-situ measurements of aerosol chemical speciation from several research campaigns (PARTICULES, MEGAPOLI, FRANCIPOL) and the CHIMERE regional chemistry-transport model, he investigated several features of fine aerosol (PM2.5) pollution the Paris region, including source apportionment, evaluation of emission inventories and formation regime of secondary inorganic aerosols. Over the period 2014-2018, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Laboratoire d’Aerologie (LA, France) in the French branch of the IAGOS European Research Infrastructure which operates worldwide meaurements of ozone and carbon monoxide on-board in-service aircraft since 1994. Based on this unique dataset of about 100,000 vertical profiles, he investigated the climotogical vertical distribution and trends of these two important gaseous pollutants, through both the entire troposphere and the planetary boundary layer. Using the FLEXPART particle dispersion model coupled to global carbon monoxide emission inventories, he also get expertise on the long-range transport of anthropogenic and biomass burning plumes. As part of the scientific team of IAGOS, he was involved in the TOAR (Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report, 2015-2018) international panel of experts on tropospheric ozone (IGAC initiative) that recently assessed the state-of-the-art knowledge on this pollutant. Over the last years, he developed a new expertise on machine learning through several well-recognised Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS), including “Machine learning” (Coursera, Stanford) and “Statistical learning” (Lagunita, Stanford). In 2018, he obtained a postdoctoral funding at the BSC from the STARS program (Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Action COFUND program) for working on the improvement of the air quality forecasts with machine learning techniques.


Jaume Ramon


PhD Student

Interests: Reanalysis, climate services, climate prediction, wind speed variability, wind power forecasting, Numerical Weather Prediction, extreme events.

Bio: Jaume Ramon received a degree in Physics from the University of València in July 2016 and holds a Master's degree in Meteorology from the University of Barcelona since July 2017. He did a 6-month internship at the Spanish weather service (AEMET) where he had the opportunity to familiarize with numerical modeling. In his Master's thesis, he studied the wind farm parameterization of the WRF-ARW model. Jaume joined the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in August 2017 and he has been working in two different European projects: S2S4E (H2020) and INDECIS (ERA4CS). He recently received an FPI fellowship to develop his Ph.D., which will be focused on improving seasonal predictions for wind power users.

Master's thesis (in Catalan): http://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/handle/2445/127779


Daniel Rodríguez


PhD Student

Interests: Air quality management, urban air chemistry, urban mobility, socio-economic factors of climate change.

Bio: Daniel Rodriguez has a degree in chemical engineering by the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), and a MSc in Air Quality Management by the University of Birmingham, in UK. He has done an intership as air quality technician at Barcelona Regional and worked in a environmental consultancy, Enitial (UK), as a field technician. He is currently doing a PhD at the BSC in the Earth System Services department about the coupling of microscopic traffic simulators with emission and air quality models in order to develop a tool able to assess and determine the impact of air quality and traffic restriction policies at Barcelona.


Francesc Roura Adserias


Junior Research Engineer
Personal page
Interests: Seasonal forecasting, cryosphere, renewable energy, mountain meteorology, reanalysis.

Bio: Francesc Roura holds a BSc in physics from the University of Barcelona since Jan 2020. He joined BSC on July 2019 thanks to the 1st BSC Undergraduate Summer Internship. He has worked as an intern at the at the Catalan Met Office (MeteoCat), at the remote sensing unit. He collaborated with the GAMA UB team (Meteorological Hazards Analysis Team). He has also collaborated with the physics department of the University of Girona in cloud coverage and with the Instituto de Astronomía de las islas Canarias (IAC), in the STARS4ALL UE project about light pollution.


Miguel Segura


Research Engineer

Interests: Study of the user engagement in order to improve the accessibility, efficiency and quality of the climate services. Promoting the use of climate and weather services by different sectors and stakeholders including academia, public sector, private companies or regular users. Numerical Weather Prediction and weather forecast.

Bio: Miguel Segura holds a BSc in Geography from the University of Valencia. He has a MSc in Meteorology from the University of Barcelona and a MSc in Geological Sciences from Brown University. He has a mixed background both in research and the private sector. He has been actively involved in soil erosion and land degradation projects in the Mediterranean, and member of the FuegoRed network. He worked as an intern at the Spanish Highest Research Council (CSIC), at the Catalan Met Office (MeteoCat) as well as at the University of Exeter, evaluating climate change impacts in the UK. Miguel worked as a researcher at Brown University, focusing on the Arctic region and climate teleconections. During the past few years, he moved to the Middle East to work for the private sector as a meteorologist working for a variety of clients, ranging from insurance, energy and transportation sectors to public organisations. He worked on operational weather forecast, implementation and development of new products, quality control and improvement of the user experience. He currently works as a Research Engineer in User Engagement at BSC. He coordinates the European Comission´s Project Copernicus C3S-512 , where he uses his combination of areas of expertise to improve the quality and efficiency of the European climate services, and increase the user´s engagement.


Albert Soret


Group leader: Earth System Services

Interests: Air quality management. Research ​on climate services tailored ​to different sectors such as renewable energy, agriculture ​and food security. Development of novel strategies to better communicate research results to the end users.

Bio: Dr. Albert Soret holds a PhD in Environmental Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Barcelona). He is the head of the Earth System Services group at the Earth Sciences Department of the BSC. The group hosts ~24 research engineers, physicists, social scientists, economists, communication experts, and air quality/climate researchers who try to bring the latest developments in Earth sciences to the society. He is a postdoc researcher with 15 years of experience in the areas of Air Quality and Climate. His main expertise includes emission, meteorological and air quality modelling, and climate services. His research facilitates technology transfer from local and national to international levels to advance sustainable development in key sectors such as urban development, infrastructure, energy, transport, health, and agriculture and water management. He is the principal investigator of the S2S4E project (EC-H2020), a member of the External Advisory Board of Clim2Power (ERA4CS), and Work Package leader within Clim4Energy (Copernicus), VISCA (H2020) and MAGIC (Copernicus). Dr Soret is also involved in several EC-FP7 and H2020 projects, and CAMS contracts: NEWA, EUPORIAS, SPECS, IMPREX, PRIMAVERA, CAMS95 and APPRAISAL. He coordinated the development of an air quality forecast system for Southern Spain-Andalucia and the Canary Islands. Furthermore, he has participated in the development of the Spanish air quality-related CALIOPE system for the Spanish Ministry and the air quality forecast system for the Mexico City's Environment Secretary. His work has resulted in 22 peer-reviewed publications, five chapters in books, proceedings, and reports, and more than 50 contributions to conferences/workshops/seminars. He is the supervisor of several postdocs and three PhD students.


Asun Lera St.Clair


Senior Advisor

Bio: Dr. Asun Lera St.Clair, philosopher and sociologist, is Director of the Digital Assurance Program in DNV Group Research and Development and Senior Advisor for the Earth Services Unit of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). She has over 25 years of experience with designing and directing interdisciplinary user-driven and solutions-oriented research for global challenges in the interface between sustainable development and climate change, and more recently on the factors that drive trust in AI and leveraging digital technologies for sustainable development. Her work has focused on science-policy-society interactions, identification of user needs, ethical perspectives, and on public and private governance (with a focus on the role of standards, recommended practices and the provision of assurance). She has experience leading large projects dedicated to co-design and co-production with a variety of users from policy makers, to vulnerable communities and private sector actors. Asun has full professor qualifications and long experience in teaching and design of study programs. She serves in the boards international, multilateral and intergovernmental organizations, including the Horizon Europe Mission Board for Climate Change Adaptation and Societal Transformations (leading of the Citizen Engagement work of the Mission), and the Sustainability in the Digital Age Initiative of Future Earth. St.Clair was Lead author for IPCC Fifth Assessment Report WG2. https://www.linkedin.com/in/asuncion-lera-st-clair-a20b4738/ —-

Marta Terrado


Science communication for Earth System Services
Personal page
ResearchGate profile

Interests: knowledge transfer, communication and dissemination of scientific research, climate & ecosystem services.

Bio: Dr. Marta Terrado has a PhD in Earth Sciences from the University of Barcelona and a Master's degree in Geographical Information Systems from the Polytechnic University of Catalunya. She has ten years of post-doctoral experience in water management, ecosystem services and climate services research, and has been involved in various national and EU funded projects on water scarcity and adaptation to climate change. As a science communication specialist in the Earth System Services group at BSC, she facilitates knowledge and technology transfer on climate services to users and the general society. She leads the communication, dissemination and user engagement actions in the H2020 projects APPLICATE (727862) and Copernicus Climate Change Service C3S_429 (Press Data Portal). She is currently involved in the dissemination tasks of the H2020 projects MED-GOLD (776467) and VitiGEOSS (869565), as well as the contract on seasonal hurricane predictions sponsored by the global reinsurer AXA (www.seasonalhurricanepredictions.org).


Balakrishnan Solaraju Murali


PhD student

Interests: Climate prediction, Climate services and Forecast verification.

Bio: Balakrishnan has a MSc. degree in Aerospace Mechanics and Avionics from ISAE Supaero, Toulouse and a B.Tech degree in Aerospace Engineering from SRM University, India. He is currently pursuing his PhD titled 'Prospects for decadal predictions in a Climate Service Context' in Earth Science Department at BSC. His research is focused on evaluating forecast quality and the predictability sources of Decadal climate prediction. During his PhD work, he will be involved in EU funded projects such as JRC-Decadal and EUCP.


Ilaria Vigo


Environmental Economist

Interests: Environmental Economics, Science Communication and Stakeholder Engagement for climate services.

Bio: Ilaria Vigo holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from Barcelona Graduate School of Economics and a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from University of Pavia. She devoted part of her studies to the research on Environmental Economics. Ilaria has experience as Policy Adviser consulting in European Commission funded projects, for Governments and for private sector as well. Additionally, she worked as Research Assistant in Economics at Pompeu Fabra University. In order to generate a social impact, Ilaria believes in the importance of communication and stakeholder engagement. She has experience in event management and communication activities. Finally, Ilaria is native Italian, fluent in English and Spanish, and intermediate in Portuguese.


Diana Urquiza

UX Designer

Interests: User interface design, User experience research, Innovation.

Bio: Diana holds a BA Degree in Visual Information Design from Universidad de las Américas Puebla.She graduated on 2011. In 2017 she graduated from a MA on Direction of Interactive Projects from Elisava. In 2019 she studied a postgraduate course on Innovation and Design Thinking from BAU university. She has experience in digital projects, elearning, branding, illustration, photography, UX and UI. She believes in the importance of solving user problems by creating user centered interfaces that help to communicate information in an interesting and creative way.


Old members and Collaborators

Melanie Davis

(User engagement expert)
Interests: Research to end user interface for wind, solar and hydro energy forecasting from one month to several years.

Sonia Jerez

(Post-doc)
Interests: Research to end user interface for wind power. Wind and temperature variability over Europe, drivers and ability of seasonal forecast systems to reproduce it.

Carlos Otero

(Master Student-Internship) Personal page
Interests: technology and knowledge transfer. Connections between the researches and the people who could take profits of them. Information and newspaper articles to better know the technological field..

Doo Young Lee

(Postdoctoral researcher) Interests: Climate model diagnostics and climate modeling, Multi-model ensemble seasonal prediction and predictability, Climate prediction and variability of the monsoon system, Large scale climate variations and variability, Forecast verification

David Arroyo

(Developer) Personal page
Interests:Software Libre, GNU Emacs, Web Development, e-learning, Social Movements

Niti Mishra

(Master internship and pre-doctoral contract)
Interests: climate prediction, forecast verification, statistical modelling, machine learning applications in climate science

Francisco Toja-Silva

(Postdoctoral Researcher*) Personal page
Interests: emissions, air quality assessment, meteorology and pollutant dispersion modelling, urban environment

Amaia Aizpurua

(Earth Sciences Web Developer - Researcher Engineer) Personal website ResearchGate profile

Interests: Web accessibility, Usability, User experience (UX), Human factors, User-Centered Design (UCD), Web development, Environmental sustainability, Earth system services.

Martí Badal Soler


Science communication and User-engagement

Interests: Science communication and Outreach. Development of creative solutions relevant to stakeholders. Co-creation and user-engagement.

Bio: Dr. Martí Badal received his PhD in molecular genetics from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and started a professional research career. After a decade at several biomedical institutes in the Barcelona area, he moved towards Science Communication with a Master's degree at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. To strengthen his communication's profile, he is currently enrolled in a second Master's degree on Corporate Communication at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Dr. Badal has extensive experience in science dissemination methodologies and teaching. His role at Earth System Services (ESS-BSC) is to engage with professional profiles, mainly from the energy sector, to co-design long range forecast tools ready to be used in their companies' decision making.

Maria Laustsen


User Experience Developer
LinkedIn

Interests: User Experience, Data Analysis, Data Science, Web Development, CMS Systems, Photography, Video Editing.

Bio: Maria Laustsen holds a BA degree in Web Development from Zealand Institute of Business and Technology in Denmark. She spend the last 3.5 years in London studying computer science courses and working as front-end developer / UX developer, both as contractor and permanent. Before getting into IT, she has a background in broadcasting where she used to work as ENG photographer and editor for 8 years. Besides Spain she has lived and worked in Australia, Canada, USA, and United Kingdom.


Prakash Kumar Jha


Postdoctoral Researcher

Interests: (1) assessing applicability of seasonal forecasts in different sectors (agriculture, forestry, water etc.), (2) projecting climate change impacts on different sectors and attributing impacts to climate, and (3) using process-based crop models for crop yield prediction and management optimization.

Bio: Dr. Prakash Kumar Jha holds a PhD in Science and management of Climate Change from the University of Venice Ca’Foscari, Italy and a MSc in Climate Change adaptation from University of the Sunshine Coast Australia. His PhD thesis assessed applicability of seasonal forecasts from state-of-the-art Seasonal Prediction Systems in a process-based crop model for rice yield prediction and optimization of inputs such as fertilizer and plantation date. He worked as a Postdoc researcher in CMCC Bologna, where he was involved in a study to identify impact of climate variability and change on Hazelnut (Corylus avellane) production and land suitability for South-East Australia and Turkey. Prakash has a BSc degree in forest science from Nepal and has 10 years of experience (facilitation and research) in the areas of community forestry, REDD+ and sustainable forest management in the context of developing countries. Currently, Prakash is working at BSC in the MEDGOLD project. Personal page
Interests: User-engagement for climate and atmospheric services in different sectors (Renewable energies, Agriculture and food security, insurance, urban development and smartcities). Science communication support to disseminate research to the end user. Research and development of User Interface Platforms for climate services (e.g. Project Ukko).

Jaime Benavides


PhD Student
Interests: urban air quality modelling, road transport emissions, urban wind dynamics, decision making

Bio: Jaime Benavides has a Msc. degree in Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems with emphasis on Data Mining and a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering both from University of Granada. Currently, he is doing a PhD under the supervision of Dr. Oriol Jorba, Dr. Albert Soret and Dr. Marc Guevara dealing with the Development and Evaluation of a street scale air quality modelling system over Barcelona with the Atmospheric Composition Group at BSC. Once the modelling system will be implemented he plans to apply it to analyse the impact of air quality measures to improve air quality in Barcelona in collaboration with other members of the Services Group at BSC.


Julia Isabella Cannata

Project Dissemination Officer

Interests: Ecological and socio-economic impacts of climate and air quality, tangible services and solutions for the public and the variety of societal sectors impacted.

Bio: Julia Isabella Cannata is a native of California whom has a Bachelor´s of Science in City and Regional Planning from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. She came to Barcelona in 2017 to further develop herself and has completed her Master´s in Territorial Planning and Environmental Management from the University of Barcelona. Throughout her studies, Julia has specialized in climate action planning, and has taken particular interest in analayzing the holistic effects of climate change to vulnerable socio-economic groups of people. To do so, she has worked on and published social vulnerability assessments to extreme heat for the County of San Luis Obispo in California and the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. Julia hopes to deliver comprehensive work with engaging communication strategies to motivate a variety of stakeholders in the climate and air quality realm and create sustainable solutions in society.


Verónica Torralba


PhD student

Interests: Climate Services for Wind Energy, Climate prediction, Wind speed variability, Bias correction, Statistical downscaling and Forecast verification.

Bio: Verónica Torralba studied Physics and a Master in Meteorology and Geophysics at Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) in Spain, where she acquired a background in climate sciences. She joined the Climate Forecasting Unit (CFU) at the Catalan Institute of Climate (IC3) in October 2013 where she worked in the adaptation of the existing tools in the CFU unit to create the necessary material for the development of climate services for the wind energy sector. After that, she joined the Earth Sciences Department at the BSC where she did a Ph.D. thesis while she was involved in different European Projects (EUPORIAS, SPECS, NEWA) and national initiatives (RESILIENCE). The overall aim of her PhD was the assessment of different statistical post-processing methods that are applied to improve the quality of the seasonal forecasts produced by seasonal prediction systems. Then, these improved predictions will be used in the development of tailored information for wind energy users. Currently she is a post-doc researcher working on the development of seasonal forecast products that can be used to improve operational climate services.


Marco Turco


Postdoctoral Researcher

Interests: Impacts of climate and weather on natural hazards and on socio-economic sectors such as water resources and agriculture.

Bio: Marco Turco received his Doctorate in Physics at the University of Barcelona in 2012. After he has developed his research at the CMCC (Italy), CNR (Italy), BSC (Spain), UB (Spain). Currently his is a postdoc researcher of the BSC thank to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant No. 740073 (CLIM4CROP project). Currently the focus of the candidate’s career is on making weather/climate information action-oriented, which he approached using multidisciplinary and multi-sectorial experiences on operational and research activities. He has been awarded for his research on climate change impacts, contribution to the analysis of precipitation extremes and active participation to MedCLIVAR activities.


working_groups/ess_people.1617142644.txt.gz · Last modified: 2021/03/30 22:17 by ngonzal2