Umberto SCIACCA received his Master in Electronic Engineering at "Sapienza" University of Rome in 1989, following a remote sensing curriculum. He spent some years as a designer of electronic equipments in the space industry. Now he is a Senior Technologist at Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Rome (the Italian institution for Geophysics). His main activities include: feasibility studies on the remote sensing electronic systems; design, engineering and test of radar-based instrumentation to be used in geophysical applications (above all ionospheric sounders and radars for glacier prospecting).

Prof. Ezio Tabacco (19 -2018) worked at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Milan and was involved in geophysical prospecting applied to hydrogeological research and crustal studies in Europe and North Africa. He has made a great contribution to research in polar areas: he was the scientific coordinator of the Italian Research Group 'Antarctic Subglacial Lakes' of the National Antarctic Research Project and a member of the Scientific Committee of the BEDMAP Consortium (Antarctic Cartography) of the Antarctic Research Scientific Committee. He has participated in nine Antarctic and two Arctic campaigns to determine ice thickness and bedrock topography and to drill the Antarctic ice cap. He coordinated the Italian research group that made an important contribution to the discovery of many subglacial lakes. He actively participated in the European project EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica).
In his professional career, Ezio collaborated with many INGV colleagues. For all of us who knew him and with whom we had the honour of sharing many challenges and professional bets, he was a teacher as well as a friend and colleague. We remember him for his professionalism, for the enthusiasm that never wavered in so many years of activity, for the freshness of his ideas, as well as for his understanding and human character.

Cesidio Bianchi, currently holds the position of Research Associate at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology.  
His main research interest is in the field of radio propagation and measurement instrumentation using radio techniques and related signal analysis. He is also interested in the design and construction of analogue and digital electronic devices for measurements in the upper atmosphere and in radio-glaciology. He has mainly studied the theoretical aspects of radio-propagation, is involved in measurements using radio and radar techniques and the development of related instrumentation. With regard to the latter, he has conducted research into the interaction of electromagnetic waves with ionised media and glaciers, designing various radar devices in the HF and VHF bands for this.
As head of the technology laboratory, together with the team of researchers and technologists, he designed various types of electronic and measurement devices, including: an HF-Doppler radar for ionospheric plasma drift measurements, an ionosonde (HF radar with complementary phase code) for measuring electron density in the upper atmosphere, an airborne envelope VHF radar for glaciological applications, and a pulse compression VHF radar designed to be installed on an aircraft to carry out continental-scale surveys in Antarctica. He has also studied the problems associated with ray tracing in anisotropic and inhomogeneous media with the development of software application packages for wave beam path determination and related problems.
He is the author of about 100 publications in leading international journals and several patents on radio and radar instrumentation for geophysical applications.

 

 

Received his Masters degree in Physics at "Sapienza" University of Rome in 1991 and joined Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) in 1997. Now he is a Senior Research Technologist at the INGV. Since 1997 he has been working on Glaciological radar as a Technologist at the INGV. The basic research interests are environmental geophysics, glaciology, radar science in geophysics and glaciology. He was principal investigator and co-investigator of five Italian Antarctic projects, developing Radio Echo Sounding (RES) Systems widely used in Antarctica by the Italian group and principal Coordinator of the Italian Radio Echo Sounding Database (IRES database). He participated at eleven Antarctic expedition from 1997 to 2015, collecting over thirty thousand kilometers of radar data in various projects (evaluation of the ice mass balance, determination of the drilling point of Epica project, Dome C ice conditions of the bedrock and subglacial lakes exploration).