Eleni Marinou graduated from the Applied Physics at the Applied Sciences Department of the National Technical University of Athens in 2010. She received her M.Sc. in the field of “Environmental Physics” from the Physics Department of the Kapodistrian University of Athens (2013). She acquired her PhD diploma on the study of the vertical distribution of desert dust and condensation nuclei over the Mediterranean from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2017).She has been contacting research at the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing (IAASARS) of the National Observatory of Athens (NOA) since 2010, focusing on the retrieval of atmospheric parameters using passive and active remote sensing techniques. Her main research interest is the atmospheric aerosol and cloud properties and interactions. She has been working mostly on studies related to the properties of mineral dust, its climatic role and its impact on cloud formation, retrieving properties of aerosols and clouds (from active and passive remote sensing methods) and on validation of space-borne atmospheric products using ground-based lidar and sun-photometric techniques.

Tsikoudi Ioanna graduated from the Physics Department of National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and she obtained her MSc degree in 2019, in the field of “Environmental Physics”, from the same Department. The subject of her master thesis was “Dynamical analysis of a Mediterranean Tropical – Like Cyclone”. Since September 2019, she is working at the National Observatory of Athens, Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing. She is a PhD Candidate (since 2020) working on lidar and radar retrievals. Her main research interest is the cloud microphysical properties and she has also worked on planetary boundary layer (PBL) studies using newly developed techniques to retrieve PBL dynamics from aerosol, water vapor, wind and turbulence, using lidar and radiosondes data.

Drakaki Eleni was born on 1985 in Athens. She received her B.Sc. in Physics and her M.Sc. in Environmental Physics/Meteorology from the University of Athens in 2010 and 2014 respectively. During 2015-2017 she worked as research associate at the Atmospheric Modeling and Weather Forecasting Group at the University of Athens. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the Harokopio University and she is working together with the Insitute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications & Remote Sensing in the framework of her thesis, aiming to study the desert dust transport processes in the atmosphere, particularly focusing on super-coarse dust particles, and their implications on clouds using multiscale modeling tools. She is an ingenious and determined environmental physicist with over 6 years of experience. Effective in converting data into meaningful insights. Seeks to use first-class theoretical and code development skills to push forward the desert dust modeling. Her research interest is atmospheric modeling, desert dust emission and transport processes, aerosol interactions and cloud processes.

Iliana Koutsoupi graduated from the Physics Department of the University of Patras in 2021. During the Bachelor studies, she studied the fluid mechanics of the tropical cyclones. She received her M.Sc. degree in the field of “Atmospheric Physics and Meteorology” from the Physics Department of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2023. Her Master thesis focused on the relationship of atmospheric blocking and heatwaves over Europe and the Mediterranean region. She has been working at the National Observatory of Athens (NOA), Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing (IAASARS) since December 2022 and she is a PhD Candidate since May 2023. Her main scientific interests are the rain and clouds microphysical properties and formation mechanisms over the Mediterranean region using satellite radars’ data, while she has also studied the atmospheric dynamics applied in Tropical-Like Cyclones and Omega blocks.

Sotirios Mallios received his B.Sc. in Physics with an orientation in Electronics, Computers, Telecommunications and Control from the Department of Physics of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) in 2005. In 2015 he earned his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from the Electrical Engineering Department of the Pennsylvania State University, USA. He worked as a Research Assistant at the Microwave and Optics Application Group at Physics Department of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2001-2010), and at the Atmospheric Electrodynamics Group at the Electrical Engineering Department of the Pennsylvania State University (2010-2015). In 2019 he joined the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing (IAASARS) of the National Observatory of Athens (NOA) to work as a Post-doc Researcher. His research interests include the topics of Atmospheric Electricity, Meteorology, Electromagnetic Theory, Fluid Dynamics, Plasma Physics, Numerical Modeling and Computational Physics.

Maria Tsichla graduated from the Physics Department of National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2017 and she obtained her MSc degree in the field of Astrophysics, Astronomy and Mechanics from the same Department in 2019. Since September 2019, she collaborates with the ReACT team of the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing at the National Observatory of Athens in the context of my PhD at the Department of Chemistry in the University of Crete. Her main scientific focus is the operation of the PollyXT lidar of the PANGEA station at Antikythera and the processing of its data in order to characterize the optical properties of the aerosols above the Eastern Mediterranean.