Advisory board

Evangelia (Valia) Drakou is an ecologist with expertise in ecosystem service modelling and mapping, working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Harokopio University of Athens, Greece. Her research work involves understanding the challenges of sustainability approaches within challenging geographic entities such as islands and transitional ecosystems, such as the coastal zone. As part of her long involvement with the Ecosystem Services Partnership and the GEOBON groups, she researches the role of standards for ecosystem services to facilitate communication within the scientific community and between the scientific community and beyond. She is involved in numerous research projects, dealing with these topics, such as GUARDEN, BIOTRAILS, REWRITE and SMILES.

"My interest in B-Cubed lies in two main topics: a) understanding how biodiversity data can be improved through standardized approaches and sharing experiences from the projects I am involved in and b) establishing concrete synergies and collaborating."

Stefan Jetschny holds a Ph.D. degree in geophysics from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. He combines more than 20 years of experience both in academic and industry research. His main research activities incorporate the application of massive, scalable, numeric algorithms to large datasets to solve applied problems, earlier in the field of subsurface earth characterization and now in environmental research. 

"As the coordinator of the FAIRiCUBE project (fairicube.eu) which is a “sister” project to B-Cubed funded through the same EU Horizon call, I am naturally interested in following the progress of B-Cubed and make use of potential synergies and collaboration possibilities."

I am a Professor in Computer Science at Aston University UK, with experience in spatio-temporal analysis for trustworthy decision support across various environmental and conservation contexts. My recent work with the DOPA team (https://dopa.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dopa/) integrated satellite products, species models, citizen science data and in situ field observations to generate robust indicators for conservation and nature-based solutions. 

"Interdisciplinary collaborations have convinced me of the importance of semantic and technical interoperability across domains, and have alerted me to the cultural and institutional challenges we face in doing open and transparent science. As coordinator of the case studies for another 'Green Deal Data Space' project, AD4GD (https://ad4gd.eu/), I am keen to exchange best practices and insights with the B-Cubed project and to stay up-to-date with its innovations on mobilising meaningful biodiversity data cubes for policy."

Chiara is an environmental scientist specialised in the interdisciplinary study of biodiversity. At the Joint the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, she is supporting the implementation of the Invasive Alien Species regulation (1143/2014/EC) and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (2008/58/EC) through the collection and assessment of relevant data, engagement with Member State competent authorities, and collaborating with relevant Directorate General of the European Commission.

"I am excited to contribute to B-Cubed as an advisor, bringing my expertise from the European Alien Species Information Network (EASIN), to help leverage data cubes and the Essential Biodiversity Variables framework to address key challenges in monitoring and managing invasive species."