Lucy comes from Birmingham, UK, where her interest in spatial ecology began with work on green corridors for the local Wildlife Trust. After studying Zoology at Nottingham University, she gained a Masters’ in GIS and a PhD on metapopulation and source-sink dynamics of plant species in the urban habitat mosaic. Her postdoctoral work on the EU FP5 FLIERS project focussed on fuzzy classification of vegetation communities from remote sensing and the efficient visualization of this uncertain information. After a further 3 years as an industrial software developer with Tadpole-Cartesia (Edinburgh) she became a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Aston University, UK, generating interdisciplinary collaborations with a variety of domains including microbiologists, agricultural specialists, economists and town planners.

Luca is a Geospatial Developer with a background in Geography and Geographical Information Sciences (GIS). He has been developing web GIS applications and analysis for more than 10 years within various international projects, mainly in Africa and in the Middle East. He joined the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (JRC) in 2013, where he has been working initially for the European Environment Agency and later within the Global Conservation and Development program. He is currently leading the implementation of geospatial services for the Knowledge Management Unit and is in charge of the design and development of the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas Explorer and eConservation. He likes to take pictures, ride his bicycle, listen to good music and pretend that he can play the piano and the guitar.

Bastian is a protected area specialist with a background in conservation science and policy. He has been working on protected areas and World Heritage sites globally for over 10 years, including many years at IUCN and UNEP-WCMC. His qualifications include degrees in Geography and Conservation Biology, and he is interested in a wide range of topics from protected area planning, management and monitoring to mainstreaming biodiversity into decision making. Bastian joined the JRC in June 2013 to support the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) and the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Management (BIOPAMA) Programme.

Michele is working as a Scientific Officer at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. He graduated in Information Science at University of Milan (Italy), Telematics Laboratory. He worked at the European Commission JRC for the Image2000 project, Nuclear Safeguards in the framework of the Additional Protocol (SIT), Environmental information systems ESDAC (European Soil Data Centre) and EFDAC (European Forest Data Centre) and the implementation of the digital platform of New World Atlas on Desertification (WAD). In the Knowledge for Sustainable Development & Food Security Unit he is involved in the Ecosystem Services Partnership initiative and in the RECARE (remediate against soil degradation) project.

Giacomo is a GIS and Remote Sensing expert, presently working as back-end GIS Developer for DOPA and BIOPAMA projects. With an MSc in Tropical Agriculture, he has more than 20 years of experience in technical cooperation with developing countries, dealing with GIS applications for environmental management, agricultural development and water resources management, image processing, land cover mapping. During his career, he travelled extensively in Africa and the Middle East and lived as permanent resident in Algeria and Iraq.

Grégoire is the Project Leader of the Global Conservation And Development (GCAD) of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. He has been working around 20 years in the field of geoinformatics applied to environmental monitoring and modeling (radioactivity, air quality, biodiversity) and he is now leading a team working on information systems in support to biodiversity and ecosystems services, with a focus on support to developing countries. His qualifications include a BSc in Zoology, an MSc in Radiobiology (Brussels) and a PhD in Geostatistics (Lausanne). In his spare time he likes to walk around with ridiculously heavy equipment to take wildlife pictures.

Krasimira has a Master’s degree in Geodesy from University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy in Sofia, Bulgaria. Her background includes a specific expertise in geomatics, agriculture, GIS and database management tools and support. She joined the JRC in 2007 as Seconded National Expert and contributed to the development of control methods for monitoring of agricultural resources under Common Agricultural Policy framework. As Data Analyst for eConservation module of DOPA, Krasimira contributes in particular to the biodiversity conservation projects data collection, analysis, validation and geo-referencing.

Eduardo is a trainee at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. He is a master student of Environmental Sciences, interested in geographic information science to study landscape ecology and eco-geomorphic processes. He has collaborated with the Cartographic Service at the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain) and worked as assistant in the PARTICIPIA project for participatory assessment of land cover changes in Northern Botswana. In the GCAD project of the JRC, Eduardo is contributing to the eConservation component of the DOPA.

Mariagrazia is a biologist with a PhD in marine ecology, marine resources management and conservation. Mariagrazia has a background in experimental ecology methods to highlight biodiversity changes in relation to human impacts and protection measures (Marine Protected Areas) and in applying causal framework (such as Driving-Pressure-State-Impact-Response) to describe the interactions between society and the environment. She joined the JRC in October 2013 to support the BIOPAMA project. She is also a contact point within JRC for the Caribbean region in BIOPAMA.

Andrea has fifteen years of experience in analysis and management of spatial data related to Natural Resources. He comes from Rome (IT), and is MSc in Natural Sciences and PhD in Biology and Ecology at University of Perugia, where he has been contract researcher at the Biology Department, involved in studies on wildlife. He worked in Tanzania, with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and OIKOS East Africa, for the Tanzanian National Land Use Plan and for a Food Security Project. He moved to Iraq and Jordan, with the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources for the Iraq National Water Master Plan. He joined the JRC as GIS Developer for the Climate Risk Management Unit and now is Database Developer at Knowledge for Sustainable Development & Food Security Unit.

Manon is a trainee working on eConservation. After a number of years spent in Africa, Manon got her BSc in Zoology from the University of St Andrews, UK, before moving on to a more multidisciplinary MSc in Environment and Resource Management at the Free University of Amsterdam, specializing in ecosystem service valuation and biodiversity. Her MSc research in Rwanda, was about quantifying human-wildlife conflict tolerance in and around the Volcanoes National Park. Manon is especially interested by the interface between conservation and socio-economic issues, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, and how to best reconcile the two to achieve sustainable management. Manon will be working on the links between conservation funding as mapped in eConservation and the biodiversity and pressure indicators documented by the DOPA.

Ole is a Senior Scientific Officer at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission since 2002. Ole is an ecologist and holds a PhD in agronomy from his studies in Hamburg, Montpellier and Goettingen. He had previously worked in protected areas, and for four years at the European Topic Centre for Nature Conservation in Paris, for the European Environment Agency. In the JRC he contributes to the coordination of the research activities related to biodiversity and ecosystem services and acts as contact point to stakeholders. He is working in particular in the eConservation module of DOPA.

Santiago is a forest landscape ecologist that joined the JRC in February 2016. His main interests are quantitative methods in spatial ecology, landscape connectivity analysis and forest biodiversity conservation. His research outputs include applied recommendations for landscape planning and endangered species conservation, new methods for the analysis of habitat connectivity and landscape configuration, and the implementation of some of these new methods in freely available software tools (Conefor). Before joining the JRC, Santiago was Full Professor at the Department of Natural Systems and Resources of the Technical University of Madrid (Spain). Information on his publications is available at http://scholar.google.es/citations?user=kOLDlZUAAAAJ