Ilenia Manco, with a background in atmospheric and ocean sciences, graduated with a Master’s degree in “Climate Sciences” at the Parthenope University in Naples, achieving a score of 110/110 summa cum laude with special mention. She currently works as a junior researcher at the CMCC (Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change) within the Regional Modelling unit of the Institute for Climate Resilience – ICR in Caserta. Simultaneously, she is completing her Ph.D. in “Future Earth Climate Change and Societal Challenges” at the University of Bologna. Certified as a meteorologist by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), her expertise lies in meteorological and climatological modeling across various spatial scales, encompassing parameterization sensitivity and result validation techniques. She has advanced her modeling approach through sophisticated artificial intelligence techniques.

During her doctoral studies, she developed an innovative Deep Learning algorithm based on a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), enabling statistical climate downscaling at high and very high resolutions for various regional domains and atmospheric datasets. Currently, she is undertaking an internship at the NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research), where she has spent several months in Boulder, Colorado. Her work in artificial intelligence is expanding with the development of algorithms supporting various national and internal projects (e.g., IRIDE, PNRR-HPC, HAMMON).