Eftychia Tzafesta

Eftychia Tzafesta

Data Science Specialist
She holds a Master’s in Ichthyology and Aquatic Environmental Sciences from the University of Thessaly and a Ph.D. from the University of Salento, where she applied innovative molecular techniques to assess biodiversity in aquatic ecosystems. Her research integrated fieldwork, laboratory analyses and data-driven approaches to explore traditional and molecular tools for understanding biodiversity changes and supporting conservation efforts. Over the years she has published several scientific articles in international peer-reviewed journals and actively contributed to conferences, seminars and workshops.
She currently works as a data scientist, specializing in developing policies and strategies for the collection, organization, storage, and accessibility of (meta)data, with a strong emphasis on harmonization, interoperability challenges, and FAIR data management. She is involved in various European projects that focus on the entire data lifecycle within environmental research.

Gabriel Pelouze

Developer for cloud-based virtual research environments

Gabriel has a PhD in plasma astrophysics and postdoctoral research experience. His research focused on the heating mechanisms in the Sun’s atmosphere, using a wide range of remote-sensing data analysis methods, as well as HPC simulations. At LifeWatch ERIC, he contributes to the development of the NaaVRE platform and the co-development of Virtual Labs for the research community. To that end, he uses modern software development and devOps practices. He is involved in all the steps of the process, from designing the software to delivering it as a service to the researchers. This includes front-end development, microservice applications design and implementation, system administration, and service operation.

Zhiming Zhao

Zhiming Zhao

Technical manager of VLIC
He is the technical manager of VLIC and leads the development of innovative Virtual Research Environment (VRE) and Virtual Laboratory (VL) solutions to support advanced data- and computing- intensive research activities. He obtained his PhD in computer science from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) in 2004. He is an associate professor and Chair of the Multiscale Networked Systems (MNS) research group at the Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam.
His research interests include Cloud computing, data science, scientific workflow management, Digital Twins, and Blockchain. He coordinates the development of the ENVRI Knowledge Base and Notebook as a VRE (NaaVRE) framework. He is an IEEE senior member and serves as the managing editor of the Journal of Cloud Computing.

Main publications:

1. Li, N., Farshidi, S. & Zhao, Z. Search Multiple Types of Research Assets From Jupyter Notebook. Softw Pract Exp spe.3406 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.3406
2. Wang, Y., Tripathi, S., Farshidi, S., Zhao, Z.: D-VRE: From a Jupyter-enabled Private Research Environment to Decentralized Collaborative Research Ecosystem. Blockchain: Research and Applications. 100244 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bcra.2024.100244.
3. Zhao, Z., Koulouzis, S., Bianchi, R., Farshidi, S., Shi, Z., Xin, R., Wang, Y., Li, N., Shi, Y., Timmermans, J., Kissling, W.D.: Notebook-as-a-VRE (NaaVRE): From private notebooks to a collaborative cloud virtual research environment. Softw Pract Exp. spe.3098 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.3098.

Lucia Vaira

Lucia Vaira

Service Centre ICT Coordinator

Computer engineer, with a PhD in Information Engineering at the University of Salento, Lucia Vaira is the Service Centre ICT Coordinator at LifeWatch ERIC. She has collaborated for several years with the Database and Information Systems research group of the Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, Italy, where she worked on medical informatics, database modelling, data warehouses, and all aspects related to the main issues existing when dealing with data (security, quality, incompleteness, inconsistency, integrity, uncertainty, etc.). She is co-author of more than 30 publications and her research interests and activities include the definition of policies, procedures, models and technologies to be used in collecting, organising, storing and accessing (meta)data with particular attention to the harmonisation and interoperability challenges and the FAIR data management.

Main publications

S. Islam, D. Papale, L. Vaira, I. Rosati, J. Peterseil, C. Pichot. (2024) Navigating taxonomic complexity: A
use-case report on FAIR scientific name-matching service usage in ENVRI Research Infrastructures. Research Ideas and Outcomes 10: e121871. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.10.e121871

Di Muri C., Arvanitidis C., Basset A., De Giorgi R., Rosati I., Vaira L. and Mancinelli G. (2023) The validation case on invasive crustaceans of the LifeWatch ERIC Internal Joint Initiative: State of the art and next steps forward. Front. Environ. Sci. 10:1038635. doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2022.1038635

Kechagioglou X., Vaira L., Tomassino P., Fiore N., Basset A., Rosati I. (2022) EcoPortal: An Environment for FAIR Semantic Resources in the Ecological Domain. S4BioDiv 2021: 3rd International Workshop on Semantics for Biodiversity, held at JOWO 2021: Episode VII The Bolzano Summer of Knowledge, September 11-18, 2021, Bolzano, Italy. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2969/paper6-s4biodiv.pdf

Pablo Santos Ortiz

Pablo Santos Ortiz

Full Stack Developer

He counts with experience since 2021 in software consulting firms and companies in the automotive sector, contributing to innovative and scalable solutions and specializing in modern web technologies. Skilled in front-end and back-end development, he has been involved in the development of MyLifeWatch, ResInfra Plus, and the migration of workflows from Tesseract to MyLifeWatch.

Francisco Manuel Sánchez Cano

Francisco Manuel Sanchez Cano

e-Infrastructure Resource Integration Coordinator

Holds a degree in Computer Engineering with extensive experience in sensor networks, IoT architectures, and research infrastructure integration. Since 2018, he has led resource integration in LifeWatch ERIC’s e-Infrastructure, though his involvement dates back to 2012, with key roles at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI, Amsterdam) and the Doñana Biological Station (CSIC), where he played a pivotal role in the process that led to LifeWatch becoming an ERIC.

He previously worked at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and at the Sierra Nevada Global Change Observatory (University of Granada), focusing on IoT and sensor networks for scientific infrastructures. Earlier, he gained international experience in Austria, working on distributed component communication in a flight simulator research project at Technische Universität Graz & Joanneum Research.

With expertise in scientific computing, smart systems, and data-driven infrastructures, he bridges IT solutions with environmental and scientific research.

Antonio José Sáenz Albanés

Antonio José Sáenz Albanés

Director of ICT-Core

ICT professional with over 30 years of experience in both the private and public sectors. He has managed large-scale distributed infrastructures with ITIL-based operations and served as CTO, advocating for open-source technologies and standards-based software development, fostering collaboration and technical excellence.

His work spans HPC, big data, and DevOps, leading the deployment of Virtual Research Environments and coordinating cloud security and operations for large-scale solutions. Additionally, as an associate lecturer, he has contributed to bridging academic knowledge and real-world innovation by sharing enterprise-scale project management insights.

Mariela Pino García

Mariela Pino García

Holds a degree in Statistical Sciences and Techniques and a PhD in Social and Legal Sciences. She has over 15 years of experience in a multinational technology company, where she has coordinated and managed R&D&I projects at regional, national, and European levels, both individually and in consortia. Her expertise lies in data science, expert systems, digital twins, and innovation management. She has led industrialisation projects and contributed to the execution of R&D&I initiatives related to data science. Her current work focuses on managing innovation projects, ensuring their successful development and implementation. She is passionate about leveraging data science and innovation to drive technological progress and efficiency in various sectors.