Luigi Ceccaroni
Innovation Lead
For internship and PhD possibilities in the Innovation group (or at Earthwatch in general), please refer to this contact page.
Biography
Luigi Ceccaroni manages strategic innovation at Earthwatch.
Luigi obtained a BSc degree in Environmental Sciences from the University of Bologna (Ravenna, Italy), with a thesis on paleoclimatic change in Antarctica; an MSc degree in Information-Technology Languages and Systems from BarcelonaTech (UPC); a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from UPC, with a thesis on ontologies and environmental decision-support systems; and an Executive MBA from EAE Business School. His activities include leading international initiatives on impact assessment in citizen science, ocean and water literacy in schools, the development of citizen science in Africa, and citizen-science data and metadata standardisation and interoperability. Previously, he was founder and research lead at 1000001 Labs, where he designed and developed decision support systems in the healthcare and environment domains.
2018-2023: Luigi is at Earthwatch trying to use citizen science to empower additional people to join the debate about the future.
2014-2020: In 2019-2020, Luigi was vice-chair of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA). In 2014-2019, he was a member of the Board of Directors of ECSA.
2010-2014: Luigi worked as a senior member of the research staff at Eurecat (Spain), where he founded and coordinated the Personalised Computational Medicine research group.
2003-2011: Luigi was a senior member of the research staff of the Software Department at UPC.
2003-2010: As the Director of research at TMT Factory (Barcelona, Spain), Luigi developed interactive television for blind people; a service of personalised and accessible orientation for tourism; and combined coordination and organisation mechanisms with model-driven design to create new software-development tools and services.
2005-2009: Luigi was an adjunct professor of Artificial Intelligence at UPC.
2001-2003: Luigi worked as a member of the research staff at Fujitsu Laboratories of America, in their Silicon Valley labs. He took part in the evaluation of European research proposals submitted in response to the call FP7-ENV-2007-1 for Theme 6 “Environment (including climate change)”, specifically on forecasting methods and assessment tools for sustainable development taking into account differing scales of observation.
Luigi has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and has managed a total of more than 19 M€ as lead researcher in the period 2008-2023.
Activities
- 2022-present: Co-chair of the ECSA’s working group “Projects, data, tools and technology”
- 2016-2020: Chair of the working group to “Improve data standardisation and interoperability” of the COST Action “Citizen Science to promote creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation throughout Europe”
- 2016-present: Member and ECSA liaison of the CSA’s international Data and Metadata Working Group
Research interests
- Citizen science
- Impact assessment
- Ocean and water literacy
- Semantics
- Personalisation
- Application of artificial intelligence
Projects
ProBleu (Horizon Europe)
Luigi is the principal investigator of the ProBleu project (2023-2026).
MICS (Horizon 2020)
Luigi was the principal investigator and coordinator of the MICS project (2019-2021).
EU-Citizen.Science (Horizon 2020)
Luigi coordinated Earthwatch’s efforts in EU-Citizen.Science (2019-2021).
COS4CLOUD (Horizon 2020)
Luigi coordinated Earthwatch’s efforts in COS4CLOUD (2019-2023).
Citizen Science to promote creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation throughout Europe (COST Action)
Luigi was the chairperson of the working group to “Improve data standardisation and interoperability” of the COST Action (2016-2020) and an editor of the book “The science of citizen science”.
Citclops/EyeOnWater (FP7)
Luigi was the principal investigator and coordinator of the Citclops project (2012-2015), a 5 M€ European project about a citizens’ observatory for coast and ocean monitoring.
Luigi wrote the winning proposal for the Synergy-COPD project (2011-2014), a 5 M€ European project about modelling and simulation for systems medicine, of which he was the principal investigator and coordinator.
Publications
A Practical Approach to Assessing the Impact of Citizen Science towards the Sustainable Development Goals. In Sustainability, 14(8), 4676.
Parkinson, S., Woods, S. M., Sprinks, J., & Ceccaroni, L. (2022).
How Networks of Citizen Observatories Can Increase the Quality and Quantity of Citizen-Science-Generated Data Used to Monitor SDG Indicators. In Sustainability, 14(7), 4078.
Woods, S. M., Daskolia, M., Joly, A., Bonnet, P., Soacha, K., Liñan, S., … & Ceccaroni, L. (2022).
Impact assessment of citizen science: state of the art and guiding principles for a consolidated approach. In Sustainability Science, 16(5), 1683-1699.
Wehn, U., Gharesifard, M., Ceccaroni, L., Joyce, H., Ajates, R., Woods, S., … & Wheatland, J. (2021).
Coordinator perceptions when assessing the impact of citizen science towards sustainable development goals. In Sustainability, 13(4), 2377.
Sprinks, J., Woods, S. M., Parkinson, S., Wehn, U., Joyce, H., Ceccaroni, L., & Gharesifard, M. (2021).
Contours of citizen science: a vignette study. In Royal Society open science, 8(8), 202108.
Haklay, M., Fraisl, D., Greshake Tzovaras, B., Hecker, S., Gold, M., Hager, G., Ceccaroni, L., … & Vohland, K. (2021).
Impact assessment of citizen science: state of the art and guiding principles for a consolidated approach. In Sustainability Science, 1-17.
Wehn, U., Gharesifard, M., Ceccaroni, L., Joyce, H., Ajates, R., Woods, S., … & Wheatland, J. (2021).
The Science of Citizen Science. In Springer, Cham. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4.
Vohland, K., Land-Zandstra, A., Ceccaroni, L., Lemmens, R., Perelló, J., Ponti, M., Samson, R., & Wagenknecht, K. (2021).
Creating Positive Environmental Impact Through Citizen Science. In The Science of Citizen Science (pp. 373-395). Springer, Cham. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4_19.
van Noordwijk, T., Bishop, I., Staunton-Lamb, S., Oldfield, A., Loiselle, S., Geoghegan, H., & Ceccaroni, L. (2021).
Citizen Science, Health, and Environmental Justice. In The Science of Citizen Science, 219.
Ceccaroni, L., Woods, S. M., Sprinks, J., Wilson, S., Faustman, E. M., Bonn, A., … & Kimura, A. H. (2021).
EU-Citizen.Science: A Platform for Mainstreaming Citizen Science and Open Science in Europe. Data Intelligence 2021, 3:1, 136-149.
Wagenknecht, K., Woods, T., García Sanz, F., Gold, M., Bowser, A., Rüfenacht, S., Ceccaroni, L. and Piera, J., 2021.
The Science of Citizen Science Evolves. In The Science of Citizen Science (pp. 1-12). Springer.
Vohland, K., Land-Zandstra, A., Ceccaroni, L., Lemmens, R., Perelló, J., Ponti, M., Samson, R. and Wagenknecht, K. (2021).
A Conceptual Model for Participants and Activities in Citizen Science Projects. In The Science of Citizen Science (pp. 159-182). Springer.
Lemmens, R., Falquet, G., Tsinaraki, C., Klan, F., Schade, S., Bastin, L., Piera, J., Antoniou, V., Trojan, J., Ostermann, F. and Ceccaroni, L. (2021).
Citizen Science, Health, and Environmental Justice. In The Science of Citizen Science (pp. 219-239). Springer.
Ceccaroni, L., Woods, S. M., Sprinks, J., Wilson, S., Faustman, E. M., Bonn, A., Greshake Tzovaras, B., Subirats, L., and Kimura, A. H. (2021).
Creating positive environmental impact through citizen science. In The Science of Citizen Science. Springer.
van Noordwijk, C.G.E., Bishop, I., Staunton-Lamb, S., Oldfield, A., Loiselle, L., Geoghegan, H., & Ceccaroni, L., 2021.
The Science of Citizen Science. Springer.
Vohland, K., Land-Zandstra, A., Ceccaroni, L., Lemmens, R., Perello, J., Ponti, M., Samson, R., & Wagenknecht, K. (Eds.) (2021).
Citclops: A next-generation sensor system for the monitoring of natural waters and a citizens’ observatory for the assessment of ecosystems’ status. PloS ONE, 15(3), e0230084.
Ceccaroni, L., Piera, J., Wernand, M. R., Zielinski, O., Busch, J. A., Van Der Woerd, H. J., & Velickovski, F., 2020.
Opportunities and Risks for Citizen Science in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 4(1), 29.
Ceccaroni, L., Bibby, J., Roger, E., Flemons, P., Michael, K., Fagan, L., & Oliver, J. L., 2019.
Defining principles for mobile apps and platforms development in citizen science. Research Ideas and Outcomes 3: e21283
Sturm, U., Gold, M., Luna, S., Schade, S., Ceccaroni, L., Kyba, C.C.M., Claramunt, B., Haklay, M., Kasperowski, D., Albert, A. and Piera, J., 2018.
Developing mobile applications for environmental and biodiversity citizen science: considerations and recommendations. In Multimedia tools and applications for environmental & biodiversity informatics, pp.9-30. Springer, Cham
Luna, S., Gold, M., Albert, A., Ceccaroni, L., Claramunt, B., Danylo, O., Haklay, M., Kottmann, R., Kyba, C., Piera, J. and Radicchi, A., 2018.
Artificial intelligence and earth observation to explore water quality in the Wadden Sea. Earth Observation Open Science and Innovation, 15, pp.311-320
Ceccaroni, L., Velickovski, F., Blaas, M., Wernand, M.R., Blauw, A. and Subirats, L., 2018.
Citizen science technologies and new opportunities for participation
Mazumdar, S., Ceccaroni, L., Piera, J., Hölker, F., Berre, A., Arlinghaus, R. and Bowser, A., 2018.
Citclops: data interpretation and knowledge-based systems integration. International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research, 13, pp.24-37.
Ceccaroni, L., Velickovski, F., Steblin, A. and Subirats, L., 2018.
Citizen science terminology matters: Exploring key terms. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 2(1), pp.1-20
Eitzel, M.V., Cappadonna, J.L., Santos-Lang, C., Duerr, R.E., Virapongse, A., West, S.E., Kyba, C.C.M., Bowser, A., Cooper, C.B., Sforzi, A., Metcalfe, A.N., Harris, E.S., Thiel, M., Haklay, M., Ponciano, L., Roche, J., Ceccaroni, L., Shilling, F.M., Dörler, D., Heigl, F., Kiessling, T., Davis, B.Y. and Jiang, Q., 2017.
Civic education and citizen science: Definitions, categories, knowledge representation. In Analyzing the Role of Citizen Science in Modern Research, pp.1-23. IGI Global
Ceccaroni, L., Bowser, A. and Brenton, P., 2017.
Analyzing the role of citizen science in modern research. IGI Global
Ceccaroni, L. and Piera, J. eds., 2016.
Crowdsourcing technologies for the monitoring of the colour, transparency and fluorescence of the sea. In Proceedings of Ocean Optics XXI, Glasgow, UK, pp.8-12.
Wernand, M., Ceccaroni, L., Piera, J. and Zielinski, O., 2012