Anna Balenzano is a research scientist at the Institute for the Electromagnetic Detection of the Environment (IREA) of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR). Her research work focuses on the physical  interpretation  and modelling of microwave scattering from land  surfaces and  inversion of microwave data into land bio-geophysical parameters. Her scientific interests include the use of information derived from Earth Observation data to improve land surface process model predictions and to  support strategies for water and food security. On these topics, she has been active as co-investigator or IREA principal investigator of several national and international interdisciplinary projects funded by the European (ESA) and Italian (ASI) Space Agencies and the European Union. In their framework, she has also participated in or organized field campaigns over national and international experimental sites aiming at collecting ground parameters for calibration and validation purposes.

Anna Balenzano, received the M.S. degree (cum laude) in Physics and the Ph.D. degree in Physics from the University of Bari (Italy) in 2003 and 2010, respectively. She was a research fellow at the Italian National Research Council (CNR) from September 2006. Since December 2018, she is a research scientist at the Electromagnetic Detection of the Environment (IREA) of CNR.

 Recent research projects:

• EU Green Deal 2022-2025: “Metrology for multi-scale monitoring of soil moisture - SoMMet”. Role: IREA PI.

https://www.euramet.org/research-innovation/search-research-projects/details/project/metrology-for-multi-scale-monitoring-of-soil-moisture

• ESA project 2021-2023: “Simulation of Hydroterra SAR System Performance in the Mediterranean and the Alps Based on Experimental Airborne SAR Data- SARSimHT-NG”. Role: IREA PI
• ASI project 2021-2023: “Use of multi-frequency SAR data for AGRIculture (SARAGRI)”. Role: Co-investigator, WP manager, Deputy manager
• ESA project 2016-2020: “Exploitation of S-1 for Surface Soil Moisture Retrieval at High Resolution- Exploit-S-1”. Role: Co-investigator, WP manager, Deputy manager

https://seom.esa.int/page_project034.php

• EU H2020 project 2016-2019: “Sentinels Synergy for Agriculture - SENSAGRI” , Role: Co-investigator, WP manager

http://sensagri.eu/