Ilenia Manco is a climate scientist with a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Physics and Oceanography from the University of Bologna, specializing in deep-learning models for climate downscaling. She earned her Master Degree in Climate Science (110/110 cum laude with special mention) at the University of Naples “Parthenope” in 2021, where her thesis focused on developing and validating an optimized WRF configuration over Italy. Certified by the World Meteorological Organization in Meteorological Training, she has been a junior researcher at CMCC’s Regional Models and Geo-Hydrological Impacts Division since 2021. Her expertise spans statistical and dynamical downscaling, benchmarking AI-driven methods against physics-based models, and applying machine-learning (including deep-learning) techniques to address several climate and weather challenges, such as identifying climate patterns and improving extreme-event forecasts.