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.
Kaniska Mallick
Dr. Kaniska Mallick, the PI, received a Ph.D. degree in Environmental Sciences at Pune University, India (2008) after carrying out PhD research at the Space Applications Centre (SAC), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). He held two postdoctoral positions in Lancaster University, UK and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NASA, US from 2008 to 2013. Since 2013, he has been a Project Leader and since 2015 Senior R&T Associate in Remote Sensing at the Public Research Centre Gabriel Lippmann, Luxemburg (now Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology – LIST).
The main research activities of Kaniska Mallick are related to studying the evapotranspiration (ET) process, ecohydrological controls and understanding the role of resistances on continental-scale ET. He developed analytical ET model (STIC) for the application of thermal remote sensing data in water stress and drought mapping using Land Surface Temperature data.
In the last years, he is emphasizing in bridging the existing gaps in thermal remote sensing of ET and ecophysiology such as:
- development of ‘calibration-free’ ET model for advancing thermal remote sensing applications,
- ET partitioning and ecohydrological controls,
- ET mapping across aridity gradients and model intercomparison,
- understanding the role of different representations of the aerodynamic and canopy-stomatal resistances on the ET uncertainty.
He has successfully led the development of the Phase-1 of European ECOSTRESS Hub
Dr. 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 associate in the fields of Data processing and databases, 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.