Panel Session

PANEL SESSION

Filippo Campagnaro

Filippo Campagnaro

Department of Information Engineering - University of Padova, Italy

• filippo.campagnaro@unipd.it

Traditional data collection methods in ocean observations are often time-consuming, expensive, and require physical sampling in challenging environments.
Collaborations with marine biologists, aquaculturists, and oceanic engineering can offer a set of cost-effective and scalable solutions to automate this process through autonomous vessels and wireless real-time sensor networks. Only a cross-disciplinary approach can address the challenges imposed by the UN Ocean Decade, including (but not limited to) those related to ecosystem health assessment, building community resilience, and equitable access to data and technology, demonstrating the power of collaboration in tackling complex environmental issues. Many research activities have been performed in these aspects in recent years: this panel focuses on the peculiar use-case of the Venice Lagoon, which presents a very heterogeneous environment where the use of traditional observatories may be insufficient to study and safeguard such a delicate area, affected by strong tides and frequent floods.

Dr Filippo Campagnaro

Filippo Campagnaro, IEEE Member, completed the Ph.D. program in Information Engineering in 2019 at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova, Italy. He is now an Assistant Professor at the same department and cofounder of SubSeaPulse SRL, a startup company active in developing innovative solutions for underwater communications and wireless sensors for studying biodiversity and climate change in coastal areas. Filippo has been working in uw networks since 2014, joined more than 20 sea trials and developed several research and industrial prototypes. He teaches advanced C++ programming at the University of Padova. Filippo led several research and industrial projects on uw networks. He is IEEE OES Young Professional Boost Laureate (2023-2024), UN Oceans Decade Volunteer, and an ECOP member. He is a former senior software developer of Wireless and More srl, spinoff company of the University of Padova. From 2021, he works on wireless sensors for studying biodiversity and climate change in coastal areas.

Dr Davide De Battisti

Davide De Battisti has graduated in Marine Biology at University of Pisa in 2011, focusing on the biology of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica. After a few years working in different private businesses, in 2015 he joined the Griffin’s Lab in Swansea (Wales, UK), attending a PhD program. Davide’s PhD focused on the relationships between plant functional traits and ecosystem functioning along environmental gradients in coastal ecosystems, successfully graduating in 2020. At present, Davide is a researcher at the University of Padova and his main interest lies in understanding the drivers of ecosystems structuring and functioning which enables societies to benefit from ecosystem services. Specifically, he is fascinated by coastal ecosystems - mainly salt marshes, seagrasses, and sand dunes - and he has thus decided to focus his research on the mechanisms that maintain these functions and services. Davide’s research aims at unravelling how plant functional traits mediate the effect that changes in environmental factors have on key ecosystem functions/services, such as primary production, nutrient cycling, coastal protection, and carbon storage (blue carbon). The goal is to understand how traits can underpin the resilience of these functions and, thus, use this knowledge to inform restoration programs. Furthermore, Davide recently started to investigate the potential of using trait concepts in greening marine infrastructure, i.e., how to improve the ecosystem delivery capacity of artificial structures in coastal areas. Davide's work includes extensive field sampling and laboratory experiments.

Dr Fausto Ferreira

Dr Fausto Ferreira is an Assistant Professor at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing. His research activities are conducted within the Laboratory for Underwater Systems and Technologies (LABUST). He has been involved in 15 EU Projects (FP6, FP7, H2020, Horizon Europe, INTERREG, Erasmus+). He is the Coordinator of the Erasmus+ project Marine Robots for better Sea Knowledge awareness (MASK). He has also been PI and co-PI of two U.S. Office of Naval Research Global funded projects and is currently PI of two EU funded projects.
Dr. Ferreira is a senior member of IEEE. He serves as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering. He has been awarded the 2023 IEEE OES Distinguished Service Award. He was the General Chair of EMRA' 2023 Workshop. He holds over 60 peer-reviewed papers including a patent and two book chapters and has reviewed for over 20 international journals. His research interests include underwater computer vision, maritime law, robotics competitions, and educational robotics. He holds a PhD in Robotics, a Master in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Bachelor in Political Science with a thesis on regulatory aspects of autonomous surface vessels.

Dr Mario Sprovieri

Mario Sprovieri received a Ph.D. in Geochemistry (1997) from the University of Palermo. He is currently Director at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ISMAR-CNR). His research is mainly focused on: i) understanding the distribution and pathways of inorganic and organic pollutants in highly contaminated worldwide distributed marine coastal zones and open sea of the Mediterranean basin, ii) investigation of the dynamics of chemical tracers in the present Mediterranean basin and their interaction with lithosphere, atmosphere and biosphere, iii) understanding of natural variability and evolution of paleoclimate and paleoceanography during the Cretaceous and late Neogene (by multi-proxy analysis of stable isotopes, trace metals, faunal assemblage distribution, etc). He was involved as Principal Investigator in the EUROCEANS, EARTHTIME, JERICO, PERSEUS and SESAME, GTSnext ITN EU, BLUEMED H2020, CIRCLES H2020 and as coordinator and principal researcher in several national and international programs focused on distribution of micro-pollutants in different coastal areas. He is coordinator of the project CISAS (FISR-MIUR), SOS Piattaforme & Impatti Offshre (MATTM), MARINE HAZARD (PON03) and other national research projects (PRIN2018, PNRA2019, etc.). He has served on many international science panels, on Committees of the CNR. He is co-author of several international science plans and co-author of over than 210 papers in peer-review journals in paleoceanography, stratigraphy and environmental science. He is responsible for the National Program “Biogeochemistry of the marine environment” for the CNR. His bibliometric indexes are H=53 and number of citations equal to 10558.

Prof. Andrea D'Alpaos

Full professor of Hydrology at the Department of Geosciences, University of Padova. He holds a BC+MS in Civil Engineering (Hydraulics) and a PhD in Hydrodynamics and Environmental Modelling, from the University of Padova. His research focuses on the bio-geomorphodynamic evolution of coastal landscapes in response to climate changes and anthropogenic influence. He is author of 100 papers published in leading peer reviewed international journals and was listed in the top 2% among the most influential scientists globally, out of a total of more 9 million, according to a Stanford global peer-reviewed study.