Profiles of Speakers at the Opening Session

Mr. Marbouty is a member of the General Council for Environment and Sustainable Development, the audit body of the French Ministry of Environment. He is also the national coordinator for the Copernicus programme for earth monitoring. He has been Director-General of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading, United Kingdom, from 2004 to 2011. He was Director of Operations at ECMWF from 1999 to 2004.

Before joining ECMWF, Mr. Marbouty was Deputy Director General of Météo-France for 10 years (successively in charge of operations, strategy and the development of regional services).

Mr. Marbouty is a member of several meteorological associations, namely Météo et Climat (France), the Royal Meteorological Society (UK) and the American Meteorological Society. Dominique Marbouty was elected President of the European Meteorological Society in September 2011 for a three-year term.

Vaclav Dvorak (1953) is a hydrologist. Since 2011 he acts as a Director of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute and Permanent Representative of the Czech Republic with the World Meteorological Organization. He completed his MSc. in hydrology at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague, and later defended his Ph.D. thesis on Analysis of Non-Stationary Hydrological Time Series at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences of the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, parallel to his career at the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic as a Chief of the European Integration Department of the Water Protection Section. While professionally participating in the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU, he had already a strong international experience as a Scientific Officer of WMO (1988-1993), co-operating with UNESCO, WHO, FAO, IAHS, IIASA and other international agencies. Vaclav Dvorak became the Environmental Secretary at the Permanent Representation of the Czech Republic to the EU in Brussels in 2004, participating in negotiations and coordination of the environmental policies with EU institutions.

As the Director of the National Hydrometeorological Service, he manages the Institute, which provides a range of important and valuable data, information and services in the field of meteorology, climatology, hydrology and air protection, fundamental for the state administration, crisis management, integrated rescue system and other sectors such as transport, agriculture, industry, education, scientific and research institutions, as well as regional authorities and general public.

Tomáš Halenka has been associate professor of meteorology at the Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Department of Meteorology and Environment Protection since 2006. He graduated in the topic of meteorology and climatology within Physics from Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics in 1984, since than he has been developing his career there. Significant contribution to this development was provided by starting the research on ozone at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, in 1991, joining the research on palaeoclimate at Catholic University of Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, in 1994-95, and by further close collaboration with The Abdus Salam ICTP mainly in regional climate modelling, resulting in the status of the Regular Associate there in 2002-2009.
He has been reading lectures on broad spectrum of topics within the course on meteorology and climatology, among others especially Meteorological Instruments and Observation Methods, NWP, Dynamic Meteorology, Climate Modelling, he has been supervisor of many doctoral and diploma students.
He has been also involved in several EC projects, among others within FP6 e.g. ENSEMBLES, QUANTIFY and CECILIA, dealing with climate change impacts assessment in Central and Eastern Europe, which he coordinated, in FP7 it was project MEGAPOLI. He was a member of Management Committee of COST734 (climate change impacts in agriculture), recently he has been participating in project UHI (Urban Heat Island) of OP Central Europe. He coordinated and participated in many local research projects funded by local Czech grant agencies. He has been the President of Czech Meteorological Society since 2008, he served as Vice-President and Treasurer of European Meteorological Society in 2005-2007, chair of Education Committee of EMS, later head of Project Team for Educational of EMS. He is a member of AMS, AGU, National Committee for IUGG, member of International Commission on Climate of IAMAS, member of ACS.

Czech-Swiss citizen, Peter J. Kalas acquired his university diploma at the Technical University in Prague in 1963 with distinction Economy and Management of Energy Sector. Till 2004 he worked for Swiss Government in charge of the Swiss development assistance in Latin America, Asia and Africa and for World Bank as coordinator of the pan-European program „Environment for Europe” and Director of the Global Climate Change Program involving 25 countries. In 2004 Mr. Kalas returned to the Czech Republic and started to work as an advisor on strategy environmental issues for the Czech Government. In 2006-2007 he was the Minister of the Environment and in last couple years he was an advisor to three Prime Ministers of the Czech Govt., to several Ministers of Environment, Agriculture and Finance and the Czech Agency for Investment Promotion (Czech Invest).

Prof. Jan Kratochvíl has been Professor at Department of Applied Mathematics, Charles University, Prague, since 2004, he chaired the Department in 2003-2011. Since 2012 he is the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University in Prague.

He spent the academic year 1994-1995 as a Fulbright Fellow at Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Oregon, Eugene, and he returned to U of O as a visiting Associate Professor in the fall semester of 1999.

In 2002-2010 he served as the President of the Czech Mathematical Society. In 2004 – 2010 he served as the chair of the European Mathematical Society’s Committee for Support of East European Mathematicians. He participated as a Program Committee Member in numerous international and local conferences and workshops, many of them he organized and chaired. /p>

Dr. Gé Verver is senior researcher in the Climate Services department of KNMI. He is manager of the EUMETNET Climate Programme in which 29 European Meteorological Services collaborate to better serve the European user community with climate products and services for the benefit of environment, safety, economy and health.

He is also involved in several EU-FP7 projects related to regional reanalyses and the development of climate services. He is member of the project team developing the European Climate Assessment & Dataset (see www.ecad.eu) in which over 40 meteorological services in Europe and the Mediterranean collaborate to provide information on changes in European weather and climate extremes, as well as the daily data needed to monitor and analyse these extremes.

In the past he participated in several national and European projects and coordinated the FP6 STAR project on tropical atmospheric research. He did his Ph.D. at Utrecht University on the interaction of atmospheric chemistry and boundary layer mixing.

Robert Mureau is Head of Research and Development at MeteoGroup.

Robert graduated in Meteorology at the University of Utrecht in1980 and worked at KNMI from 1980-2009, interrupted by a stay at ECMWF from 1987-1992 working on ensemble forecasting.

In 1999 he moved to the operational department within KNMI, where he developed various tools for forecasters and introduced the concept of probability forecasting to the forecasters.

In 2009 he left the Civil Service and became Head of Research and Development at MeteoGroup, Europe’s largest private weather company, in Wageningen.

His main expertise is dynamic meteorology, predictability and (communicating) uncertainty/probability forecasting.

Foeke originally is a physicist with a PhD in astronomy. He worked at the Dutch Met Office (KNMI) as a scientist in the Atmospheric Chemistry Research group for 3 years, and after that as senior scientist of the KNMI Instrumentation Division, where he was responsible for basically all observations and observation systems at KNMI.

In 2002 he took the position of managing director of Almos Systems, located in Culemborg, the Netherlands. This company designed, built and installed meteorological observation systems worldwide. Almos Systems was sold in 2005 to a Spanish multinational called Telvent, where he became responsible for the global Weather Product Center. After Telvent was sold again to Schneider Electric in 2011, Foeke started a new position as Business Development Manager at Kipp & Zonen (solar radiation measurements) on January 2, 2012.

In 2014 Foeke succeeded the Ben Dieterink as CEO of Kipp & Zonen, and he took over Ben’s position in HMEI as CAP member as well.

William B. Gail is the 2014 President of the American Meteorology Society as well as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Global Weather Corporation, a provider of precision forecasts for weather-sensitive business sectors. He was previously a Director in the Startup Business Group at Microsoft, Vice President of mapping products at Vexcel Corporation, and Director of Earth science programs at Ball Aerospace. Dr. Gail received his undergraduate degree in Physics and his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, where his research focused on physics of the Earth's magnetosphere. During this period, he spent a year as cosmic ray field scientist at South Pole Station.

Dr. Gail is a lifetime Associate of the US National Academy of Science’s research council and is currently a member of their Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. He has participated on a number of Academy committees, including the 2012 review of the National Weather Service and the 2007 Decadal Survey that recommended a 10-year NASA/NOAA satellite plan. He serves or has served on a variety of editorial, corporate, and organizational boards and is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

Jeremiah Lengoasa has been Deputy Secretary-General of WMO since 1 March 2010. Prior to this, he was Assistant Secretary-General of WMO since 8 August 2005. He holds Master’s degrees in Climatology and Development Management from Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa, and for several years worked as a teacher and university lecturer in geography and environmental studies.

Mr Lengoasa served in the South African public service in the areas of environment, environmental regulations and environmental quality and protection, followed by a period in the private sector as a senior bank manager.

From 2003 to 2005, Mr Lengoasa was Chief Executive Officer of the South African Weather Service and Permanent Representative of South Africa with WMO and was a member of the WMO Executive Council.

Dr. Clare Goodess is a Senior Researcher and Research Manager with over 30 years experience of contract research in the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Her main current research interest is in the development of projections of regional climate change and working with users and decision makers to ensure that these are used effectively in climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability studies. She has a particular interest in past and future changes in the occurrence of extreme weather events and in the Mediterranean. Clare has co-ordinated and worked on many major UK and European climate change projects. At the European level, she was the coordinator of work on the production of probabilistic regional climate projections in the ENSEMBLES FP6 integrated project (having previously co-ordinated the FP5 STARDEX project on statistical downscaling). She was the co-ordinator of integrating (indicator-based) case-studies within the CIRCE FP6 project on impacts of climate change in the Mediterranean. In the FP7 CLIM-RUN project her role was to co-ordinate bottom-up case studies on identifying and meeting the user requirements for climate services. She also has ongoing involvement with work on economic assessments of climate change and adaptation, including projects such as PESETA, Climate-Cost and ECONADAPT. Clare is a lead author for the IPCC Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). Since October 2012 she has been Co-Chair of the World Climate Research Programme’s new Working Group on Regional Climate.

Hugo Zunker holds a degree in Aerospace engineering and is with the Copernicus Service unit of the Directorate-General Enterprise and Industry of the European Commission since July 2013. He is in charge of the coordination between the Copernicus services and for the implementation of the Copernicus climate change service (C3S) in particular. Until then he was working on Space research theme in the 7th Framework Programme and Horizon 2020 in areas such as earth observations and applications. Before joining the European Commission Hugo has worked five years for industry in the area of satellite navigation applications and avionics for general aviation and for the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in various positions.