Main speakers

Isabel Hassall

International MPA Specialist, Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), UK

Isabel is currently working on the Blue Planet Fund’s Ocean Country Partnership Programme, where she liaises with international partners to develop biodiverse MPA (Marine Protected Areas) networks. In her previous role of Ecosystem Analyst at JNCC she specialised in analysing Copernicus satellite imagery to detect changes in habitat condition over time at a landscape scale.

Sara Kasmaeeyazdi

Researcher, Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering, University of Bologna

Sara is a mining engineer. She took her PHD from Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering (DICAM) in 2017 in mining engineering-Geostatistics with the collaboration of Mines ParisTech (France). After finishing her PhD, she has won a Post-Doc position in Georesources group (UNIBO) working on the H2020 project (GEOTeCH). In 2018, the candidate has won her proposal to connect the earth observation data (ex. Copernicus data) with in-situ samples from a bauxite residuals (bauxite residuals from processing plant in Greece) to characterize the critical raw materials (ex. V2O5- Vanadium). The target of the project is interacting in-situ samples and earth observation data for sample optimization using geostatistical tools. During her research since 2018 with RawMaterials Copernicus Academy, she convinced the group to be the host of the short course in Bologna. She fully participated for organizing the short course in addition to her tasks as a teacher for six courses. She has worked on several projects funded by EIT RawMaterials as the main researcher such as BRICO-Piles, COP-Piles and finally INCO-Piles. She has spent three months as a gust researcher at Technology University of Luleå in 2021.

Webpage: https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/sara.kasmaeeyazdi2/en

Eraldo Matricardi

Forestry Engineer, MSc and PhD in Geography

Associate Professor at University of Brasilia, Brazil. July 2009 – current. Teaching and Research on Remote Sensing, Geographic Information System, Forest Fires, Land use and land cover changes, Climate Changes. 2009-current.

Programme Officer at the United Nations Development Program – UNDP. Office of Environmental projects, working with local, regional, and international agencies on environmental issues in the whole country (Brazil). 2008 – 2009.

Programme Officer at the United Nations Development Program – UNDP. Office of Environmental projects, working with local, regional, and international agencies on environmental issues. 2008 – 2009.

Visiting Scientist at the Global Observatory for Ecosystem Services, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. January 2000 – July 2007. Land use and land cover changes in the Brazilian Amazon, involving forest degradation, selective logging, deforestation, and forest fires.

James McPhee

Full Professor at the Universidad de Chile and member of the Department of Civil Engineering.

Professor James McPhee is a civil engineer with a major in Hydraulic, Sanitary and Environmental Engineering from the University of Chile and a PhD in Water Resources Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, USA.

He was director of the Department of Civil Engineering, and member of the academic council of the same department, among other administrative positions. He served as Vice Dean of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (FCFM) of the University of Chile from 2017 to 2022.

His areas of interest are mountain, snow and glacier hydrology and sustainability of water resources management.

Panelists

Adison Altamirano

Adison Altamirano is an Associate Professor in the Department of Forestry Sciences at the University of La Frontera (Temuco, Chile). He obtained his doctorate in 2007 in the area of Landscape Ecology at the Universidad Austral de Chile. He completed his postdoctorate at the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham (UK), following his own research area.

He has been professor in charge of the undergraduate courses Ecology, Landscape Ecology, Research Method, Geomatics, GIS and Remote Sensing, and Research Seminar. In graduate courses he has developed teaching activity in GIS, Landscape Ecology, Scientific Basis for the analysis of the environment in agri-food production systems. He is currently PhD student guide and sponsor of postdoctoral researchers.

He currently participates as lead researcher and co-investigator in several initiatives. The most recent is his research on multifunctional landscapes in lake areas of central-southern Chile and Argentina. Author of numerous scientific articles and book chapters.

In his area of research he has stood out and has been recognized in different instances. He had the opportunity to be appointed as representative in Chile of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, Landscape Ecology group from 2016.

Iván Ávila

Iván Ávila Pérez is a Forestry Engineer and MSc. in Forestry Sciences with emphasis in natural resource management, graduated from the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica. He works at the PRIAS Laboratory of the National High Technology Center of Costa Rica as a researcher in the field of geomatics and earth observations, where he specializes in studies on land cover and land use change analysis, photogrammetry and spectrometry using drones, geostatistics, water and forest resource quality modeling and landscape ecology.

Matías Bonansea

Assistant Researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and Professor of Mathematics (FAV-UNRC), Argentina

Publication of 39 papers in indexed scientific journals (15 in the last 5 years), Co-author of two book chapters, participation in 70 papers of International and National Congresses (17 in the last 5 years), participation in 9 technical reports and direction of 9 research fellows (2 CONICET fellows). Participation in 8 research projects in the last 5 years. Currently director of a PICT, a PPI and a project “Science and Technology against Hunger” of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MINCyT) of the Nation. Expertise: Monitoring and evaluation of the water quality of reservoirs and rivers with conventional techniques, statistical techniques and through the use of satellite images and remote sensing techniques. Evaluation of the dynamics of changes in land use and surface coverings (LULC) using satellite information. Relationships between LULC at the basin level and reservoir water quality.

Aníbal Díaz

Marine biologist, holds degrees on Environmental and Marine sciences. His expertise includes remote sensing applied to oceanography and coastal processes, as well as fisheries resources. Currently, he works as environmental consultant for a variety of projects in Latin America.

Andrés Honeyman

Agronomist Winemaker PUC, Master in Higher Education, Specialist in Precision Agriculture (GIS) and Applied Innovation Methodologies. He has 22 years of experience in agricultural production systems and academic teaching. He worked for 16 years in processing plants and grape processing and later in nuts, developing projects to expand process capabilities and innovation of products. He currently teaches at higher education institutions, with a focus on developing degree projects and innovation projects in conjunction with private productive companies and the Polytechnic University of California (CalPoly) for the digital transformation of agriculture.

Felipe Lobo

Adjunct Professor at UFPel (Federal University of Pelotas) and Coordinator of the Water Engineering Course at CDTec. Biologist (2007), Master’s in Remote Sensing at INPE (National Institute for Space Research, 2009) and Doctorate in Geography (2015) from the University of Victoria (Canada), where he developed tools for monitoring water quality and mining impacts.

Pablito López Serrano

Professor-Researcher attached to the Institute of Forestry and Wood Industry and Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Sciences of the Juárez University of the State of Durango, Durango, Mexico.

Honorary Researcher in the state system of researchers in the State of Durango and Member of the National System of Researchers. He is currently the General Coordinator of the Institutional Doctoral Program in Agricultural and Forestry Sciences at the Juárez University of the State of Durango (PIDCAF-UJED). He has more than 50 technical and scientific publications, participation in more than 60 courses and forums for producers, technicians and academics. He has disseminated knowledge in national and international conferences on remote sensing issues applied to the management of forest and environmental resources..

Joel Martínez

Luis Joel Martínez, studied at the University of Twente (The Netherlands), is an associate professor in Geomatics, at the National University of Colombia, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences in Bogotá. For more than 25 years, he has been conducting research on the use of geoinformation for the sustainable use of natural resources with interest in spatial analysis and modeling, crop monitoring and crops characterization based on data from remote and proximal sensors, he is a member of the group of research Sustainable Development and Environmental Management. He has made several scientific publications on different topics of Geomatics applied to agriculture and natural resources.

Taras Matselyukh

CEO/CTO at OPT/NET BV

Passionate inventor, Taras Matselyukh is a subject matter expert in application of advanced AI in profitable markets. For more than a decade Taras managed and monitored critical systems on which our society depends on. It is then that he noticed costly consequences of human errors caused by information overloads and lack of required training in complex data-driven environments. Informed by these experiences, he became a successful freelance consultant, whose services were in high demand all around the world.
After founding OPT/NET BV, Taras became the first human out of many whose knowledge and skills are being transferred to the AI platforms OPT/NET builds. Taras lives in the Netherlands with his family and has an educational background spanning quantum physics, radio electronics, and economics with internationally recognised science degrees from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

5+ years – Entrepreneurship and start-ups.
10+ years – Managerial experience in the medium and senior management roles.
20+ years of experience with design, implementation, management and operations of converged Telecom Networks and Solutions.
10+ years experience in Sales & Technical Marketing in roles of Senior Solutions Architect, Senior Systems Engineer, Technical Leader, Consulting Engineer, Partner Management and Business Development experience in the role of Technical Program Director, Managing Director and Entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurship skills: founded 2 companies, working at the successful scale-up.

Luis Morales

Associate Professor
Department of Environmental Sciences and Renewable Natural Resources, Faculty of Agronomic Sciences, Universidad de Chile.

Professor in Natural Sciences and Physics, and PhD in Environmental Sciences. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of the University of Chile, in the Laboratory of Research in Environmental Sciences LARES. His work focuses on: agrometeorology, applied remote sensing, spatial modeling in agriculture and ecology.

Dr. Morales has been distinguished with the membership of one of the oldest scientific societies in the world, awarded with “2021 Smart 50 Awards”, which every year rewards the main global initiatives of smart cities, and appointed academic editor of a new journal that is part of a project that seeks to bring together scientific publications under open content license.

Professor Morales, for more than 20 years, has been a member of the Scientific Committee of the Revista de Teledetección (Spanish Journal of Remote Sensing), belonging to the Sociedad Española de Teledetección.

Jaime Ortega

Full Professor at the Universidad de Chile and principal investigator at the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM)

Bachelor and Master in Mathematics from the U. de Concepción and PhD in Mathematical Sciences from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He is Full Professor of the Department of Mathematical Engineering and Principal Investigator of the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) at the University of Chile.

With more than 20 years in R&D projects in mining and applications of image processing and optimal design, he was director of the Imaging Laboratory of the CMM and is Principal Investigator and director of the P6 project “Sensorization and Remote Monitoring of Aquifers” of the Center for Water Technologies – CAPTA. He is currently Principal Investigator and in charge of the Digital Mining area of the Center for Mathematical Modeling, he is also coordinator of the Copernicus Project of the University of Chile at CMM, a project that develops the Satellite Data Repository provided by the Copernicus Program of the European Union (https://www.copernicus.eu) and co-director of the Satellite Imaging Group.

Alejandro Pezzola

Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Hilario Ascasubi (Experimental Station for Agriculture and Livestock), National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), Argentina.

Alejandro holds a degree in Geography from the Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina.

Specialist in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing since 1987. With studies in Germany and Spain, he is also a specialist in rural fires.

Alejandro, has to his credit multiple works in Research and Development. Author of countless articles in scientific journals on crops in different areas of Argentina.