Team
Zoltan Szantoi
Zolti is a Land Applications Scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA) and a research fellow at Stellenbosch University’s Department of Geography & Environmental Studies (South Africa). Before joining ESA, he worked as a scientific and technical officer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. He received his Ph.D. degree in Geomatics from the University of Florida (USA).
Zolti’s current focus is on the global-level detection of staple crops and yield estimation, soil organic carbon estimation, and disease prediction and early detection in Africa using state-of-the-art machine learning techniques and satellite data.
Patrick Matgen
Patrick Matgen earned his M.Sc. in Environmental Engineering from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland) in 2002 and completed his Ph.D. in 2011 at Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands), focusing on the integration of microwave remote sensing with water balance modelling.
From 2002 onward, he held roles as Project Manager and later as Lead Research and Technology Associate at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), where he was responsible for acquiring funding and managing research and innovation projects in Earth observation and hydrological–hydraulic modelling.
Since January 2020, he has been leading the “Remote Sensing and Natural Resources Modelling” group, whose work focuses on the synergistic use of multi-sensor space- and airborne data to better characterise Earth’s natural resources. At the end of 2025 he took over the role as Principal Investigator of the European ECOSTRESS Hub project.
Tian Hu
Dr. Tian Hu received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Cartography and Geoinformation System in 2018 and from Griffith University in Environmental science in 2020.
He joined Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology in September 2020 as a Postdoctoral researcher and has been working as a Research & Technology Associate since January 2023. His research interests include thermal infrared remote sensing, radiative transfer modelling, land surface temperature and emissivity estimation, drought monitoring, surface energy balance modelling, and ecosystem processes.
He has been involved in the European ECOSTRESS Hub, mainly focusing on land surface temperature and evapotranspiration model development, product generation and the corresponding validation at the continental scales.
Yoanne Didry
Yoanne Didry is a software engineer with a background in computer science, geoinformatics, excellent programming skills, and experience in software development and cloud computing. He was involved in the development of decision support and data processing systems and to the logistic domain, visualisation and data intelligence. I worked on the Phase-1 of European ECOSTRESS Hub and co-lead the parallel computations and model implementation in the CreoDIAS.
Patrik Hitzelberger
Patrik Hitzelberger, Master in Medical Informatics (1995) from University of Heidelberg, Senior Research & Technology scientist in the fields of Data processing and databases, research data management, statistics, applications of environmental data.
More than 20 years of experience in working on and leading technology transfer and research projects, six years in large ICT industry as team leader for software development. Lead HMI development for ESA project DMSS in collaboration with KU Leuven.
Works on remote sensing algorithm migrations to large computing infrastructures. Various collaboration projects with LIST Remote Sensing team ongoing, and managing Research Data Management projects at LIST.
Ziyu Lin
Ziyu did her Ph.D. degree at the University of Hong Kong and specializing in plant ecology and biogeography, with a focus on long-term land cover mapping and forest carbon modeling using fine-scale, dense time-series satellite data. She joined Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology in February 2025 as a Postdoctoral researcher.
She is currently working on the GPP and WUE product of ECOSTRESS Hub. Leveraging her multidisciplinary expertise in GIS, remote sensing, earth system modeling, and ecology, she aims to contribute fresh perspectives and innovative insights to the ECOSTRESS Hub.