IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2016 - 48

responsible for the analysis and validation of data collected
via the iSPEX project.
Frans Snik (snik@strw.leidenuniv.nl) works as an astronomer at Leiden University where he develops innovative instrumentation for astronomical and atmospheric research.
He invented a novel polarimetric method for measuring atmospheric particles, which led to the SPEX (satellite) instrument concept. He leads the iSPEX project that involves thousands of citizen scientists and their smartphones to perform
crowdsourced measurements of air pollution.
Piet Stammes (stammes@knmi.nl) received his Ph.D.
degree in physics and astronomy in 1989 at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam on radiative transfer in planetary
atmospheres. From 1989 to 1991, he was a research fellow
at the European Space Agency/European Space Research
and Technology Centre, Noordwijk. Since 1991, he has
been a staff scientist in the Climate Research Department of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
(KNMI) where he works on radiative transfer modeling
of the earth's atmosphere for remote sensing applications,
including sun photometry of aerosols. His work includes
the retrieval of clouds and aerosols, calibration, validation, and interpretation of satellite data from the Global
Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME), Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography, ozone-monitoring instrument, and GOME2. He
is a member of the international science teams for these
instruments. He is participating in several national and
international projects on satellite data regarding clouds
and aerosols. He is the deputy division head of the Climate
Earth Observation division of KNMI.
Fabio Domenico Vescovi (fabio.vescovi@astrium.eads.
net) is an agronomist and chartered geographer, and he is
currently a remote sensing senior consultant at Airbus DS,
United Kingdom. He is the team leader for Copernicus data
quality control, which involves quality analysis of satellite
images contributing to Copernicus services. He has over 20
years of experience in the field of earth-observation applications to land use/cover change, water resource management in arid lands (with a special focus on Africa), and vegetation monitoring. He has spent his career in public and
private institutions in the space sector in Italy, Germany,
and, currently, the United Kingdom.
Gunter Zeug (gunter.zeug@terranea.de) received his Dipl.
Geogr. degree as a geographer from the University of Munich,
Germany, in 2000, and soon after, he was with GAF AG, one
of Europe's leading consultancies in the fields of geoinformation. He is the managing director of Terranea, a consultancy
offering geoinformation and environmental services. Between 2010 and 2014, he worked with the European Environment Agency (EEA) as a project manager for Copernicus.
He was involved in the preparation of the local component
of the pan-European land-monitoring service. Within EEA's
Global Monitoring for Environment and Security/Copernicus In-Situ Coordination project, he provided key elements
for the development of the Copernicus in situ component.
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From 2006 to 2009, he has worked as a researcher with the
European Commission's Joint Research Center. Employed in
the Global Security unit, he was involved in several projects
on developing security and crisis-related spatial intelligence.
Pierre-Philippe Mathieu (pierre.philippe.mathieu@
esa.int) received his degree in mechanical engineering and
an M.Sc. from the University of Liege, Belgium; a Ph.D. in
oceanography from the University of Louvain, Belgium; and
a management degree from the University of Reading Business School, United Kingdom. He is an Earth-observation
(EO) applications engineer in the EO Science and Applications Department of the European Space Agency in the
European Space Research Institute, Frascati, Italy. He has
spent more than 20 years working in the field of environmental and ocean modeling, weather risk management,
and remote sensing. He is also very involved in a series of
international working groups on science, data, education,
and research infrastructures, including, e.g., the World Climate Research Programme Data Advisory Council and the
Belmont Forum on E-Infrastructure for Research.
Yves-Louis Desnos (yves-louis.desnos@esa.int) is head
of the research and development section at the EarthObservation (EO) Programme Directorate of the European
Space Agency (ESA) and the European Space Research Institute. He is an ESA senior advisor on synthetic aperture radar
technologies and applications (since 2006) and responsible
for the Dragon cooperation with China's Ministry of Science
and Technology of the People's Republic of China (since
2004). In 2012, he cochaired the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium in Munich, Germany. In 2014, he
received the People's Republic of China Friendship Award
for the Dragon cooperation program. In 2015, he initiated
and organized the first ESA EO Open Science 2.0 Conference in the framework of the Scientific Exploitation of Operational Missions element that he has managed since 2012.
Michael Rast (michael.rast@esa.int) holds a doctorate degree in geology. Following specialization in geoscientific photogrammetry and remote sensing at the University of Munich, he joined the European Space Agency
(ESA) and has been involved in establishing science and
mission requirements for Earth-observation satellite
sensors, such as MERIS on Envisat. His research interests in the past, following a research year at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, were in the area of imaging spectroscopy for terrestrial ecosystems. He was heading the
Land/Surfaces Unit at the ESA's Mission Science Division
at the European Space Research and Technology Centre,
The Netherlands, for several years prior to his secondment to the Group on Earth Observations Secretariat in
Geneva as senior programme officer. Since 2008, he has
been head of the Science Strategy, Coordination, and
Planning Office in the Directorate of Earth-Observation
Programmes at ESA-the European Space Research Institute in Frascati, Italy. He also holds a teaching affiliation in the Department for Geography at the University
of Munich, Germany.
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2016