STELLA MELO
Stella has a PhD is Space Science and since then has worked pushing the edge of knowledge and fostering innovation on fields of earth and planetary atmospheres, climate and weather. She worked for over 10 years at the Canadian Space Agency as Program Scientist providing science leadership to the design, development and implementation of several space missions led by Canada, NASA, ESA, CNES and other Space Agencies. Work in Space requires thinking way ahead everyone else. We are constantly dealing with the unknown and pushing the edge of technology to make possible what people normally would qualify as unthinkable!. In 2014 Stella took on a new challenge: to lead a team to bring innovation to the meteorological observation system in Canada, including develop the vision of an integrated observing system for the Canadian Arctic. While climate is an intellectual concept, weather is something people experience in their daily life, and we are certainly experiencing different weather patterns than before. We do need to be innovative to adapt. Stella and her group have been working with academia and industry in Canada and abroad towards innovative ways to observe, understand and forecast weather parameters. Her group is also highly involved on bridging new approaches like AI to improve our capacity to provide weather information. We have seen that changes in climate are driving important changes in the ecosystem. Well, it seems clear that our capacity to sustain life in this planet will depend on our ability to innovate and break throughout the unthinkable!