Profiles of Speakers

Mr Marbouty has been Director-General of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading, United Kingdom, from 2004 to 2011. Under his leadership ECWMF made great progress to continue its reputation as the best global numerical weather prediction centre in the world, also providing complementary world-class services such as seasonal forecasts, reanalyses and global air quality forecasts. He was Director of Operations at ECMWF from 1999 to 2004. Dominique Marbouty is a member of the General Council for Environment  and Sustainable Development, the audit body of the French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development, Transport and Housing.

Dominique Marbouty was elected President of the European Meteorological Society in September 2011 for a three-year term.

Professor Antoni Rozalski Ph.D. has been a project manager of three State Committee for Scientific Research grant projects, and a project team member of four SCSR grant projects. He has completed two long-term research placement periods in Forschungszentrum Borstel, Germany. For many years, he has cooperated with the Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Recently, he has started cooperation with the School of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology of the Nankai University in Tianjin, China. He is an author, or co-author of over 100 original research works, 30 survey articles, over 100 press releases from Polish and international conferences, as well as an open textbook, and an English coursebook's translation.

He conducts lectures on microbiology to students of Biology, Environmental Science and Biotechnology. He also gives monographic lectures on bacterial pathogenicity factors. He has been a faculty supervisor to 7 PhD and 50 Master's degree holders. He was a reviewer for 30 doctorates, 3 habilitations and 3 awards of the highest academic title.

A reviewer for over 100 grant projects of the State Committee for Scientific Research and of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, twice appointed as an expert panel member. He has also reviewed over 50 publications in Polish and international magazines.

He held the position of Vice Dean between the years 1991 and 1993. From 1996 to 2002 he served as a Dean of the Faculty of Biology and Earth Science, and from 2002 as the Dean of the Faculty of Biology and Environmental Science.

Since 1997, he has been an UL representative in the Research Grants Commission of the President of Łódź.

Mieczyslaw Ostojski has been Director General of the Polish Institute of Meteorology and Water Management since 2006. He has introduced numerical weather prediction models at mesoscale as well as nowcasting; new services combining weather and river water flow forecasts to address floods and related extreme events; a highly-awarded online weather service; and a national network of meteorological kiosks.

Mieczyslaw Ostojski has been the Permanent Representative of Poland with WMO since 2006 and was elected Second Vice-President of the World Meteorological Organization by the Sixteenth World Meteorological Congress in 2011 for a four-year term. He has served as a member of WMO Executive Council since 2007, and as Vice-President of the Regional Association for Europe since 2009. He is active in strengthening cooperation within Europe and with other regions, as well as in enhancing the visibility and importance of the role of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services.

Mieczyslaw Ostojski holds a PhD in Engineering from the Gdansk University of Technology, where he specialized in environmental engineering.

Professor Kazimierz Kłysik is an expert in topoclimatology and urban climatology. Since 1992 he has headed the Department of Meteorology and Climatology at the Faculty of Geographical Sciences. He was a Dean of this Faculty in the years 2001-2008. He is a member of the International Association for Urban Climate (IAUC). Professor Kłysik has organised four Polish Conferences of Urban Climate and Bioclimate and co-organised the 5th International Conference on Urban Climatology together with IAUC.

Professor Joanna Wibig is the President of the Meteorological Section of the Polish Geophysical Society.

She has headed the section since 2005.

She is an expert in atmospherical circulation, its variability and trends and influence on other meteorological elements in Europe, contemporary climate changes and extreme meteorological events. She was the coordinator of one international and many national scientific projects. She is the head of the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Faculty of Geographical Sciences.

Aryan van Engelen is the Programme Manager of the European Climate Support Network (ECSN) 2007-2011.

After his academic studies in geology and hydrology he was appointed at KNMI, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, as climatologist, then as head of the Climatological Services an since 2007 as senior adviser climatology. He served GIE-EUMETNET, the co-operative network of 29 European NMHS’s, first as chair and from 2007 onwards as programme manager of the ECSN programme and is appointed as (interim) capability manager for the succeeding climate programme for 2012. He is chair of the ECSN board, responsible for the scientific organization of the climate session programmes of the biennial EMS/ECAC’s and EMS/ECAM’s.

Aryan van Engelen is coordinator of the WMO – RAVI Regional Climate Centre on climate data, co-chair of WMO ET on DARE and principal delegate of KNMI at WMO-CCl.

Dennis Schulze is the director of MeteoGroup‘s businesses in Germany and Poland.

He is the chairman of the Board of the German Association of Private Weather Companies Verband Deutscher Wetterdienstleister, and and was involved in the consultation with the German government at the XIV Congress of the WMO in 2003. He is also involved in PRIMET, the Association of Private Meteorological Services in Europe, representing the interests of more than 35 private meteorological companies.

Dennis Schulze studied meteorology at the FU Berlin and graduated in 1998. During his time at university he worked for private weather services as a forecaster and IT expert.

Ben Dieterink has been chairman of the The Association of Hydro-Meteorological Equipment Industry until 2010.

Ben Dieterink is the Chief Executive Officer of Kipp & Zonen B.V. He graduated in electronics and business in 1975. Before joining Kipp & Zonen in 1990 he worked for 15 years in the test and measurement industry for various companies around the world, among them Philips and Gould Electronics. He became CEO in 1992, and co-owner of the company in 2003.

In 2000 Vaisala and Kipp & Zonen founded with support of WMO the association of the Hydro and Meterological Equipment Industry, HMEI. Ben Dieterink was elected as the first HMEI chairman in 2002. After completing the maximum of two terms, he is now succeeded by Brian Day of Campbell Scientific Canada.

Filipe Domingos Freires Lúcio is the head of the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) Office established within the Secretariat of the World Meteorological Organization in July 2011. He his tasked with coordinating all the activities for the development of the detailed implementation plan and the governance mechanism of the GFCS, which be shall be approved by an extraordinary session of the World Meteorological Congress in October 2012. The GFCS Office is also tasked with preparation of the extraordinary session of the World Meteorological Congress.

Filipe Lúcio joined the World Meteorological Organization in 2007 as a Senior Scientific Officer in the disaster risk reduction programme, following 10 years of hands-on experience, as the head on the National Institute of Meteorology of Mozambique, in the development of the early warning system, which is today an important tool for protecting lives and livelihoods in the country.

Michael Rast holds a doctorate in Geology. Following specialisation in geoscientific photogrammetry and remote sensing at the University of Munich he has after joining the European Space Agency ESA mainly been involved in establishing science and mission requirements for Earth observation satellite sensors, such as MERIS on Envisat. His research interests in the past were following a research year at NASA’s JPL mainly in the area of imaging spectroscopy for terrestrial ecosystems. He was heading the Land/Surfaces Unit at ESA’s Mission Science Division at ESTEC, the Netherlands for several years prior to his secondment to the GEO Secretariat in Geneva as Senior Programme Officer. Since 2008 he is heading the Programme Planning Office and currently Head for the Science Strategy, Coordination and Planning Office in the Directorate of Earth Observation Programmes at ESA-ESRIN in Frascati, Italy. Michael Rast is still holding a teaching affiliation at the Department for Geography of the University of Munich, Germany.

Dr. Jörg Schulz is a senior scientist at the European Or­ganization for the Exploitation of Me­teorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and leads a section concerned with the creation of high quality Climate Data Records from satellite data serving needs of climate services and reanalysis. His major scientific interests are remote sensing of water vapor and precipitation as well as satellite instrument calibration and time series homogenization. Dr. Schulz obtained his Ph.D. in meteorology in 1993 from the University of Ham­burg, Germany. Following several years at different research institutions, he became the scientific leader of the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring at Deutscher Wetterdienst, before moving to EUMETSAT in 2010. Dr. Schulz is Vice-Chair of the GEWEX Data and Assessment Panel, a member of the CEOS Working Group Climate, a member of the Executive Panel of WMO Space Program Sustained Coordinated Processing of Environmental Satellite Data for Climate Monitoring (SCOPE-CM) initiative and acts as a co-chair of the climate working group of the CGMS-TOVS Working Group.

Freja Vamborg is the project manager for MiKlip, a German federally funded project on decadal climate prediction. She is based at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, where she also obtained her PhD in 2011. Her doctorate work was in the field of palaeo-climate modelling, with a particular focus on feedbacks between albedo and precipitation in northern Africa.

Freja Vamborg obtained a BA in mathematics from Cambridge University in 2004. Thereafter she did internships in various international environmental organisations, before obtaining an MSc in Climate Change from the UEA, Norwich. Before joining the MPI-M, Freja Vamborg worked as a research assistant at the British Antarctic Survey.

Dr. Roberto Buizza, Head of the Predictability Division of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Research Department, has been one of the key scientists involved in the development of ensemble prediction systems. He has a Laurea in Physics from the University of Milano, a PhD in Mathematics from University College London, and a Master and Business Administration from London Business. He joined ECMWF in 1991, after four years at the Centre for Thermonuclear research of the Electricity Board of Italy (CRTN/ENEL). His main area of work has been the study of perturbation growth in the atmosphere, ensemble prediction, and the value of probabilistic forecasts. He now leads and manages research work in medium- and extended-range forecasting, including coupled ocean-atmosphere modelling, and the development of applications of probabilistic forecasts. He is a fellow of the UK Royal Meteorological Society and the Institute of Physics, and has 95 papers published in the peer-reviewed literature. In 2002, he was awarded the Buchan Prize of the UK Royal Meteorological Society jointly with Dr. Franco Molteni.

Dr. Reinhard SCHULTE-BRAUCKS joined the European Commission in 1981. He worked in a number of areas such as anti-trust, completion of the internal market, information society and space research.

In June 2012 he took up his present position as head of the GMES Bureau in the European Commission’s Enterprise and Industry Directorate-General. He is responsible i.a. for the development of satellite based services in the areas of land observation, emergency, oceanography, atmosphere, international security and climate change monitoring.