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Biographies

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Arif Albayrak
Associate Research Engineer, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland, USA, Co-Chair, ITU/WMO Data Working Group

Arif Albayrak is a scientist at NASA’s Biospheric Sciences Laboratory through the Joint Center of Earth System Technology (JCET) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Mr. Albayrak has a multi-disciplinary background in engineering, applied mathematics, and computer science with over 20 years of work experience specializing in machine learning (ML) algorithms with an emphasis on estimation, classification, and extraction of information patterns from satellite-based sensor data. His research interests include knowledge graphs, natural language processing and semantic image segmentation using deep learning algorithms. He is also a member of the NASA Earth Science Disaster Group (HQ), the Earth Science Information Partners, (ESIP), and Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, (AAAI).

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Yifang Ban
Professor, KTH Royal Institute of Technology I Associate Director, Digital Futures

Dr. Yifang Ban is the Professor & Director of Geoinformatics Division at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and an Associate Director - Dissemination and Impact at Digital Futures in Stockholm, Sweden. Before joining KTH in 2004, Dr. Ban was a Tenured Associate Professor at York University in Toronto, Canada. She received a PhD from University of Waterloo, Canada. She is the PI/Co-PI for a number of impactful projects, including EO-AI4GlobalChange, SAR4Wildfire, and Climate Change Induced Disaster Management in Africa. Her research has been focused on Earth observation big data analytics, machine learning/deep learning, and their applications in wildfires and other natural disaster mapping, and environmental change monitoring (e.g. urbanization) to support sustainable and resilient development. She has published extensively on these topics. Professor Ban is also a co-chair (chair-elect 2023-2027) of ICA Commission on Sensor-Driven Mapping, and a co-lead of the GEO initiative ‘Global Urban Observation and Information.

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Emilio Chuvieco
Professor of Geography and director of the Environmental Ethics chair, University of Alcalá, Spain

Professor of Geography and director of the Environmental Ethics chair at the University of Alcalá, Spain, where he coordinates the Master program in Geographic Information Technologies, and leads the "Environmental Remote Sensing Research Group". He has received the Rei Jaume I award for Environmental Protection in 2022, Previously, he obtained the research award of the Social Council of the University of Alcalá in 2000, the national award on forest fire research in 2004, the award as advisor of Ph.D. dissertations in 2016, and the award on excellence research and medal distinction of University of Alcalá in 2021. He is within the 2% of most influential scientists in the Standford University ranking of the world scientists.Visiting professor at the U.C. Berkeley and Santa Barbara, Cambridge, the University of Maryland and the Canadian Remote Sensing Center. Advisor of 41 Ph.D. dissertations. Principal investigator of 35 research projects and 25 contracts. Author of 33 books and 408 scientific papers and book chapters, It has an h-index of 63 in the Scopus database and 82 om Google Scholar (all data refer January 2023). Former president of the Spanish Remote Sensing Society and the Geographic Information Technologies group of the Association of Spanish Geographers. Corresponding member of the Spanish Academy of Sciences since 2004. He is the science leader of the Fire Disturbance ECV within the European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative Program. Science coordinador of the european project FirEUrisk. Co-editor in Chief of Remote Sensing of Environment from 2015 to March 2020.

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Dante Corti
Engineer and Head of the Fire Protection Central, Forestal Arauco

Dante Corti, is currently the Engineer and Head of the Fire Protection Central of Forestal Arauco, Chile's largest commercial forestry company. He is Forestry Engineer from Universidad Austral de Chile, Doctor in Geographic Information Technologies from Universidad de Alcalá in Spain and Master of Science in GIS and Land Management from AgroparisTech in France. Dante has more than 22 years of experience in research related to remote sensing applied to forest fires and forest inventories in Universidad Austral, Universidad Catolica de Temuco and the Ministry of Agriculture of Chile.

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Morgan Crowley
Forest Fire Research Scientist, Natural Resources Canada

Dr. Morgan Crowley is a Forest Fire Research Scientist with Natural Resources Canada at the Great Lakes Forestry Centre - Canadian Forest Service and the Tier 2 science lead of the WildFireSat mission that will be launched at the end of the decade. As the science lead for Tier 2, Dr. Crowley is leading the algorithmic development of Earth-observation-based fire behaviour products and a multi-source satellite data synthesis framework. Prior to working with the Canadian Forest Service, she completed her Ph.D. at McGill University, where her research explored novel applications of fire monitoring using Google Earth Engine and multi-sensor satellite data fusion. Dr. Crowley has been internationally recognized for her scientific research and outreach, including as a 2022-2023 Google Developer Expert, a Geospatial Rising Star by Geospatial World Media, and a leader in ML4EO by Radiant Earth Foundation.

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Kim Feuerbacher
Product Manager, OroraTech

"As a product manager for OroraTechs satellite based wildfire solution, I am ensuring the success of our product by continuously delivering value to our users. OroraTech’s wildfire solution is designed to inform fire professionals and organizations of the earliest detection of hotspots and allow them to monitor areas at risk of wildfires. With our product we provide reliable data fused from 20+ satellite sources and first-in-class wildfire algorithms that help protect natural resources & assets. As a product manager, I work closely with engineering, design, marketing, and sales to ensure our product meets the customer's needs and achieves the company's goals."

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Ritwik Gupta
PhD student, University of California, Berkeley

Ritwik Gupta is a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley focused on AI for Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response and Dual-Use AI Policy. His research on exploiting multi-modal satellite imagery to understand building damage after disasters, shining a light on illegal fishing operations, and aiding first responders in evacuating in complex situations has been deployed worldwide by hundreds of agencies and governments such as CAL FIRE, the United Nations, the Red Cross, and more.In addition to his academic work, Ritwik serves as the Deputy Technical Director for Autonomy at the Defense Innovation Unit within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. In this role, he works to bring innovative technologies and capabilities into the DoD to support complex mission needs. Prior to joining Berkeley, Ritwik was a principal investigator at Carnegie Mellon University for AI for Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response.

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Julia Gottfriedsen
Data Science Team Lead, Orora Technologies

Julia Gottfriedsen leads the Data Science team at Ororatech, where she works on thermal infrared data analysis and ML applications. With a background in environmental science and engineering, Julia has gained extensive experience within climate tech in different industries and research institutes: She worked at the Siemens AI Lab in Munich and California, investigated extreme weather events at the German Aerospace Center and is in research collaborations with ESA, LMU and TUM Munich. Her goal is to be at the forefront of technological innovation to create a carbon-neutral future.

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Everett A. Hinkley
USDA Forest Service

As the National Remote Sensing Program Manager for the FS, Everett provides remote sensing policy, oversight and direction to primary agency stakeholders including the Geospatial Technology Applications Center, the National Interagency Fire Center, Law Enforcement and Investigations, Forest Health Protection and regional remote sensing coordinators to ensure that agency remote sensing requirements are understood and needs are met and that new technology is appropriately exploited to match current and evolving agency mission requirements. Within the Washington Office, Everett coordinates with the Geospatial Management Office Leadership Team to develop the annual remote sensing program of work and provide guidance to the field.   Everett serves as the primary remote sensing liaison to NASA, DHS, the BLM, the USGS, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to ensure that the Forest Service is utilizing the most up-to-date data sources, applications and best practices for data exploitation and use. This role promotes collaboration on remote sensing activities which helps to reduce redundant efforts within the federal government.

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Bilel Jamoussi
Chief of Study Groups, TSB, ITU

Tunisian born, Dr. Bilel Jamoussi is Chief of the Study Groups Department of ITU Standardization Bureau in Geneva Switzerland. Since 2010, he has been leading the bureau’s standards making activities into a new era characterized by rapid convergence and the need for increased collaboration with vertical sectors and partnership between developed and developing countries. Prior to 2010, Jamoussi worked for a Telecommunication equipment and solutions provider for 15 years in Canada and then in the United States where he held several leadership positions and was granted 22 US patents in diverse areas including packet, optical, wireless, and quality of service. He holds a BSc, MSc and PhD degrees in Computer Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, USA. He is fluent in Arabic, French, and English and speaks some Spanish and German.

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Monique Kuglitsch
Chair, ITU/WMO FG-AI4NM I Innovation Manager at Fraunhofer HHI,Germany

Dr. Monique Kuglitsch is the Innovation Manager at Fraunhofer HHI and Chair of the newly established ITU/WMO Focus Group on AI for Natural Disaster Management. She previously managed operations for the ITU/WHO Focus Group on AI for Health. In her past role at the American Meteorological Society, M. Kuglitsch was the Lead Technical Editor for several journals (including the Journal of Hydrometeorology and Journal of Physical Oceanography) and the Senior International Outreach/Communications Specialist. As a researcher, M. Kuglitsch has investigated past climate change, extreme weather events, and regional climate model projections. M. Kuglitsch has experience in fluvial and limnological field work, geochemical laboratory methods, applied mathematics and statistics, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate.

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Helen Li
Senior AI researcher, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT)

Ms Helen Li serves as the Senior AI researcher, Vice Chairman of AIIA (Artificial Intelligence Alliance) Technology & Industry Group, and Leader of Industry Group in Artificial Intelligence Research Team within the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). During the course of her career, she has taken charge of several important research topics including Artificial Intelligence (industry and application), application of 5G, along with other emerging technologies in various industries. She is also an expert on AI in Emergency Management, Emergency Security, Intelligent Computing, and AI in Remoting.

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Juerg Luterbacher
Vice-Chair of the ITU-T Focus Group on “Artificial Intelligence for Natural Disaster Management” (FG-AI4NDM) I Director of Science and Innovation and Chief Scientist, World Meteorological Organization

Prof. Jürg Luterbacher is the Director of Science and Innovation and the Chief Scientist of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). He has demonstrated leadership and excellence in a broad spectrum of climate science and contributed significantly to the holistic Climate-Earth System approach. He is a pioneer in the paleoclimate science of Europe and Asia. He was a lead author of the 5th IPCC Assessment Report chapter 5 “Information from Paleoclimate Archives”. Prof. Luterbacher is a recipient of the Senior Visiting Scientist Award of the Chinese Academy of Science, the Scientific Research Expert of the Academy of Athens, and the Medal for outstanding scientific contribution in teaching (University of Brno, Czech Republic). Prof. Luterbacher is an elected member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature / Mainz, Germany. He is also Co-Chair of the ITU-T Focus Group on “Artificial Intelligence for Natural Disaster Management” (FG-AI4NDM).

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Ioannis Papoutsis
Researcher, Institute of Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing of the National Observatory of Athens

Ioannis Papoutsis is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing of the National Observatory of Athens. He is an electrical and computer engineer and holds a PhD on the use of advanced satellite interferometry techniques from the National Technical University of Athens. He has a deep understanding of the Copernicus flagship programme, where he served as the Operations Manager of the Greek node of European Space Agency Hubs that distribute Sentinel data, as well as the Copernicus Emergency Management Services Manager for Risk and Recovery. Ioannis leads the AI4EO research group OrionLab and his current research focuses on the exploitation, management and processing of big satellite data, and the use of artificial intelligence technologies for knowledge extraction using Earth Observation and geo-information, with emphasis on disasters management. He has participated in numerous research projects funded from the European Commission (H2020 and FP7), the European Space Agency and Copernicus. He is the coordinator of the H2020 project DeepCube that focuses on AI pipelines for big Copernicus data, and of the ESA-funded project SeasFire on seasonal wildfire forecasting with deep learning. Ioannis has co-authored several research articles in peer-reviewed journals.

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Ivanka Pelivan
Science Manager at Fraunhofer HHI I Co-Chair of the Working Group on AI for effective communications, ITU/WMO Focus Group on AI for Natural Disaster Management

Dr. Ivanka Pelivan is Science Manager at Fraunhofer HHI and Co-Chair of the Working Group on AI for effective communications which is one of the working groups inside the ITU/WMO Focus Group on AI for Natural Disaster Management. With a background in aerospace engineering her research focused on fluid dynamics, satellite dynamics and control, and thermophysical modeling among other. As ROLIS (Rosetta Lander Imaging System) operations engineer at DLR (German Aerospace Center) she commanded a camera that has been the basis of the FireWatch camera technology used in early wildfire smoke detection worldwide.

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Ioannis Prapas
Researcher, Institute of Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing of the National Observatory of Athens

Ioannis Prapas is a researcher at the Institute of Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications, and Remote Sensing of the National Observatory of Athens. He’s doing his Ph.D. in “Deep Learning methods for Wildfire Forecasting at Different Spatio-Temporal Scales” under the supervision of Dr. Ioannis Papoutsis and Professor Gustau Camps-Valls. He holds degrees in electrical and computer engineering, and big data management and analytics. Before moving to research, he spent 2 years at the borders of France and Switzerland developing software at CERN. Since 2020, he has been applying Deep Learning to Earth Observation Data. While his main research focus is on the anticipation and understanding of wildfires, he has also worked on self-supervised learning and automatic landslide detection with radar data, for a NASA challenge in the context of the Frontier Development Lab 2022.

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Michele Ronco
PhD, IPL

Michele Ronco studied physics at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", where he obtained his PhD in 2019 with a thesis on the phenomenology of quantum gravity approaches in astrophysical observations. Visitor scientist in several research institutions: Penn State University, Fudan University, IEM-CSIC, and University of Valencia. He did a postdoc within the HESS telescope group of the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris. After that, he worked as data scientist in the industry both in the insurance and in the remote sensing sectors, focusing on deep learning for the segmentation of Sentinel-2 images. He is now a postdoc at the IPL, where he works on explainable machine learning methods for a variety of earth science problems, including wildfire forecasting and human movements induced by weather hazards.

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Maria João Sousa
PhD student, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa I Researcher, Forest Fire Research Center

Maria João Sousa is a PhD student at Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal) while a research fellow at both IDMEC in the Center of Intelligent Systems and at ADAI in the Forest Fire Research Center. Her research interests are in the areas of computational intelligence, robotics, and networked systems. She was nominated for the UN Environment Young Champions of the Earth 2018 Prize for her project on decentralized intelligent sensor networks for fire detection and monitoring. She has co-organized several entrepreneurship events, including for international programs such as 3 Day Startup. She joined the Climate Change AI core team in 2020, where she has collaborated on and spearheaded several flagship events of the organization such as the summer school and the workshop series “Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning” at leading AI conferences (ICML 2021, NeurIPS 2021 (lead organizer), and NeurIPS 2022). During this period she also held organizational and leadership capacities, in activities such as recruitment, and serving as Vice-Chair on the Programs Committee (2021-2022) and more recently as Chair of Climate Change AI.

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Andrea Spichtinger
Satellite Data Scientist, Orora Technologies

Dr. Andrea Spichtinger is a Satellite Data Scientist at OroraTech, a German-based company that provides global wildfire detection and monitoring services using satellite data. She is responsible for developing and implementing algorithms to process and analyze the data from OroraTech's own satellites. She has a background in Physics and a PhD in physics-guided Machine Learning.

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Andrea Trucchia
Scientist, CIMA Research Foundation

Dr. Andrea Trucchia is a scientist in the Wildfire and Forest Biodiversity Unit of CIMA Foundation. He is a Mathematical Engineer with a background in environmental modeling and early warning systems. The principal scientific fields he contributed to are:computational wildfire science; uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis of environmental models; mathematical modelling of biofilms and anaerobic digestion process.The last years of his research were devoted to the improvement of early warning system for forest fires trough a spatial mapping of hazard, danger and risk,using Machine Learning techniques and IA. The goal of his current research is to spot the main drivers of the severe wildfires in order to deliver timely information and optimize the fire response resources.

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Brian Wee
Founder and Managing Director, Massive Connections (retired)

Brian Wee is based in Washington, DC and recently retired from his role as the Founder and Managing Director of Massive Connections. In a prior role, he was the science, technology, and policy liaison to the US Government for the US National Ecological Observatory Network. Prior to retirement, he worked extensively on data-driven decision-management for climate resilience, traceable decision-making using data and models, and legislative and regulatory barriers to the effective use of decision-science for complex socio-environmental challenges. Brian holds a Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, a M.Sc. in Computer Science (with a focus on Artificial Intelligence), and a B.Sc. in Information Systems and Computer Science.

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Marta Yebra
Associate Professor in Environmental Engineering, Fenner School of Environment & Society and the school of Engineering

Dr Marta Yebra is an Associate Professor in Environmental Engineering at the Fenner School of Environment & Society and the school of Engineering. She is the Director of the ANU-Optus Bushfire Research Centre of Excellence which aims to use technology to protect Australia from catastrophic bushfires. She is a Mission Specialist at the ANU Institute for Space and Associate editor for Remote Sensing of Environment. Her research focuses on developing applications of remote sensing for the management of fire risk and impact at local, regional and global scales. She has served on several advisory government bodies including the Australian Space Agency’s Bushfire Earth Observation Taskforce (Feb-May 2020), Australian Space Agency’s Earth Observation Technical Advisory Group (Since 2019) and the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning’s Scientific Reference Panel (Since 2019) and ACT Multi Hazards Advisory Council (Since 2021). From 2004-2010 she was employed at the University of Alcala, where she was involved in two large multidisciplinary projects which assessed and integrated the main fire risk factors and analysed fire risk trends, considering potential changes in socio-economic factors as well as foreseen impacts of global climate change. During her research, she spent time at the Centre for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing (University of California at Davis, USA); the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA, Argentina) and the School of Environmental and Life Sciences of Salford (UK). From 2010 to 2013 Marta was a postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO Land and Water developing innovative methods to integrate satellite and in-situ observations from micrometeorological tower sites with models to predict carbon-water coupling. In 2017, Dr Yebra was awarded the prestigious Max Day Environmental Science Fellowship from the Australian Academy of Science. She was also awarded the CSIRO Pyne-Scott Career Award in 2013 and the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC's Outstanding Achievement in Research Utilization award in 2019. She was a finalist for the National Resilience Australia Award (2021) and the Australian Space Awards Academic of the Year (2022).

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Puzhao Zhang
Research Scientist at the Division of Geoinformatics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Dr. Puzhao Zhang, is a Research Scientist at the Division of Geoinformatics, KTH. He obtained his PhD degree in Geoinformatics from KTH in 2021. He received a postdoctoral fellowship for the project "Radar and Optical Remote Sensing Time Series for Wildfire Monitoring with Deep Learning" from Digital Futures, Sweden. His research focuses on exploiting multi-source satellite remote sensing data and geospatial machine learning for large-scale wildfire burned area mapping and progression monitoring. He is co-editing the special issue “Multi-source Data with Remote Sensing Techniques” in Remote Sensing. His research interests include satellite remote sensing big data analytics, large-scale geospatial machine learning, and environmental change monitoring.

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Yu Zhao
PhD candidate at the Division of Geoinformatics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Yu Zhao is a PhD candidate at the Division of Geoinformatics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. He received two master’s degrees in Embedded systems from Technology University Eindhoven, Netherlands and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden in 2019. His bachelor’s degree comes from Zhejiang University with a major in Electrical Engineering. His research interests include active fire detection, time-series analysis, artificial intelligence and computer vision. Currently, his research is supervised by Prof.Yifang Ban, the Director of the Division of Geoinformatics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.