International Advisory Board

Prof. Ana Queiros is a Principal Investigator at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, and an Honorary Professor at University of Exeter’s Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy. Ana leads and advises on research programmes focused on the co-development of climate-resilient approaches for marine conservation, harvesting and marine spatial planning, including blue carbon habitat management. She works with both modelling and observational techniques, and interacts closely with policy, industry and finance.

Prof. Paola Passalacqua is a Professor in the Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering and in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. She graduated from the University of Genoa, Italy, with a BS (2002) in Environmental Engineering, and received a MS (2005) and a PhD (2009) in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on transport processes along river and delta networks, with particular focus on flooding, river-floodplain connectivity, and coastal resilience. Passalacqua is the lead principal investigator of SETx-UIFL, a US Department of Energy funded Urban Integrated Field Laboratory that focuses on the compounding effects of flooding and air pollution on Southeast Texas communities. Additionally, she is the Chair of Planet Texas 2050, a Grand Challenge initiative at the University of Texas to advance interdisciplinary research on resilience and co-design adaptative strategies with stakeholders and frontline communities in Texas.

Francisco (aka Pancho) Argüelles Paz y Puente is the Senior Director for Network and Power Building with The Praxis Project. He was born in Mexico City and for the last forty years has worked on human rights issues in Mexico, Central America, and the United States: as a rural teacher in Chiapas, supporting Guatemalan refugees, co-founding Universidad Campesina in Nicaragua, and with rural cooperatives in Central Mexico. He has lived in Houston TX since 1997, there he co-founded Fe y Justicia Worker Center and served as the executive director of Living Hope Wheelchair Association for ten years. Pancho served on the board of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights where he co-authored the popular education curriculum, BRIDGE: Building a Race and Immigration Dialogue on the Global Economy and currently serves on the board of the Highlander Research and Education Center. He holds a Bachelor Degree in Education from UNAM (Autonomous National University of Mexico) and a Master of Science on Multicultural Education from University of Houston – Clear Lake.

Dr.ir. G.Y. (Ghada) El Serafy is an expert on data sciences in ecosystem monitoring and modelling. She is actively involved in the strategic research and developments within Deltares. She is part of Deltares Science Council and associate professor at the Technical University of Delft. She has a broad experience in uncertainty analysis, sensitivity analysis and data assimilation related to marine and coastal environmental quality and ecosystem health. As a marine and coastal specialist, she has extensive experience in integrated monitoring and environmental impact assessments on national and regional level including change detections on multiple spatial and temporal scales.

She supervises several doctoral degrees and Master of Science students. She leads several national and international projects with applications in different fields with main focus on coastal water quality and ecology and digital twins of the ocean. She is coordinating several European projects and participating in others dealing with data science, use of Earth Observation, ecosystem functions and services (more recent are ULTFARMS, OBAMA-NEXT, TRIDENT, EDITO, and FOCCUS). She has extensive experience in project integration and ensuring cross-cutting within multi-layered and large projects.

She is actively in leading role in various international initiatives: EuroGOOS executive directors board and chair of Coastal Working Group, Director of GEO AquaWatch Group in Remote Sensing of inland and coastal waters, cofounder of EuroGEO Ecosystem and Biodiversity Action Group, and participates as chair in GEO ECO Ecosystem monitoring of Protected Areas, GEO BON Group on Biodiversity. She is on the steering committee of CoastPredict Programme of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Recently, she acts as the focal point for North East Atlantic region for UN OceanPrediction collaboration center.

Susan is the Coastal Science Program Manager for the Volgenau Virginia Coast Reserve (VVCR) office of The Nature Conservancy. Her work involves engaging with partners and designing research to develop tools and strategies for informing coastal resilience decisions and projects, demonstrating the value of nature-based solutions for coastal resilience, and building community relationships.

Susan has a Ph.D. in Climate Dynamics from George Mason University and a Master of Science degree in Oceanography from Texas A&M. She has more than 20 years of experience in the fields of physical oceanography and large-scale climate processes utilizing statistical and dynamical modeling. She serves on the Atlantic Regional Panel of CLIVAR (Climate and Ocean: Variability, Predictability and Change), one of the four core projects of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP).

Antonio Danieli holds a degree in Engineering Management at the University of Bologna and a Master degree at Università Bocconi in Management of Non-profit companies. After his studies he worked for several years in consulting companies (Accenture, KPMG) and then in Non-profit foundations. Between 2005 and 2009 he served as Director of Fondazione Nomisma Terzo Settore, a research and consulting company focused on Non-profit organizations and foundations, public administrations and corporate social responsibility.

He joined Fondazione Golinelli in 2009 as Secretary General, became its Director General in 2011, member of the board in 2018 and, from 2020, Vice President. From 2018, he is also CEO of G-Factor, the startup incubator-accelerator powered by Fondazione Golinelli and, starting from 2022, he is president of Utopia SIS, a VC fund, that includes Fondazione Golinelli among the promoters, dedicated to high tech & life science startups.

Since 2011, he has managed a period of growth for the foundation: an increase of initiatives; the creation of a national network of school teachers and educators in scientific fields; the development of a big technological and scientific ecosystem that finds its base in Opificio Golinelli, headquarters of the foundation. Other projects carried out range from innovative laboratories to the launch of several educational projects and schools, with the support of the Ministry of Education and of many public and private institutions. Today Fondazione Golinelli is an innovative organization, a key institution for education in science, entrepreneurship training, technology transfer, startup incubation and acceleration, scientific and humanistic cultural dissemination in Italy and, through a gradual growth, internationally. 

Other roles: Chairman of the Board of Trustees in Eureka Trust, which supports many specific entrepreneurship-training programs for high school and university students, researchers and scientists. From 2011 to 2018, he was a Board Member of ASSIFERO, the Italian Association of foundations and philanthropic institutions. He is also part of the Andrea Bocelli Foundation Advisory Board.