Dr Vasco Mantas works at the Earth Science Department of the University of Coimbra, leads the university’s Climate and Spatial Intelligence Platform (CSIp), and is an international member of NASA’s Precipitation Measurement Missions Science Team. His work focuses on transforming Earth Observation data into actionable knowledge for communities, institutions and decision-makers, with a strong emphasis on land surface and atmosphere interactions and watershed resilience.

At CSIp, he develops and applies Earth Observation and AI-based methods using multi-modal data, integrating satellite observations, ground information, drones and other geospatial sources. This work supports multidisciplinary research and operational applications, including land use and land cover mapping, precipitation monitoring, product validation, vegetation characterisation, environmental risk assessment and watershed-scale decision support. A central goal is to create robust, transparent and user-oriented interconnected products that can be tested, improved and adopted through Living Lab approaches.

Beyond his research activities, he is Secretary of AGU Informatics, co-leads the NASA GPM Mentorship Programme, and mentors students, teachers and early career scientists internationally.