Eric Jansen is a junior scientist at the Regional Ocean Forecasting Systems division of the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC). He holds a PhD in physics (2011) from the University of Nijmegen (NL) and has 15 years of experience in data analysis, numerical modelling and scientific data visualisation. His current research focuses on oceanographic data assimilation and he is author and reviewer of various publications in international peer-reviewed journals. He teaches a course on data assimilation within the Frontiers PhD programme at the University of Bologna and is (co-)advisor to several PhD students within this programme. He is the scientific responsible for the Copernicus Black Sea project at CMCC and the leader of the Black Sea Data Assimilation research unit.