Luca Girardo

Luca Girardo holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the Technical University of Munich. He began his career in the private and institutional sectors, with roles at Siemens and Europol, before joining the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2009, where he initially worked on ICT service integration and performance management.

Since 2017, he has contributed to ESA’s Earth Observation programmes, leading operations of PRISM—the service  providing  Copernicus Contributing Mission on-data  data to thousands of users across diverse application areas. He also managed ground segment operations for CryoSat-2 and Aeolus, and coordinated cross-mission service activities.

He currently serves as Copernicus and Destination Earth (DestinE) Advanced Infrastructure Manager, focusing on the integration of high-performance computing, scalable cloud infrastructures, and emerging technologies such as Quantum Computing to enable next-generation Earth Observation services.