Welcoming new colleagues at Carbon Portal
Some new colleagues have joined ICOS Carbon Portal since late 2024. The Carbon Portal, hosted by Lund University in Sweden and Wageningen University in the Netherlands, is home to all ICOS data products providing free access to high-quality and standardised greenhouse gas data, as well as to scientific and educational products and services. Below is a short introduction of the new colleagues.
Yi Wang, Scientific Programmer & Researcher
Joined Carbon Portal in November 2025
What's your professional background?
I have a research background on the ecosystem domain. I recently finished my PhD from ETH Zurich and my doctoral research focused on understanding the impact of agricultural management and extreme events on grassland ecosystem services, with a special emphasis on greenhouse gas fluxes.
What are your main responsibilities?
As a part of the Science & Integration team at CP, my main responsibilities include helping different users (from PIs, to thematic centers, to more general public) with our Jupyter services and Python libraries, developing and improving our data products and services, as well as supporting various research projects.
What excites you about working at ICOS?
Previously I worked with colleagues from Swiss FluxNet, where we maintained eddy covariance stations and provided openly accessible ecosystem flux data to bigger networks such as FLUXNET and ICOS. I am very excited that this new role at ICOS CP allows me to continue this aspect and grow even further. I look forward to contributing to products and services that support a broader scientific community and help translate observations into meaningful impacts.
Andrew Debevec, Front-end Software Developer
Joined Carbon Portal in December 2024
What's your professional background?
I worked in IT at the University of Illinois for 8 years, assisting educators and researchers in the use of technology in the classroom and online, as well as helping to maintain departmental websites, online course sites, and research servers. Before working in IT, I studied Entomology (B.S. and M.S.), focusing on evolutionary history.
What are your main responsibilities?
As a front-end developer, I am responsible for the interactive and user-facing elements of our applications and websites. For example, I have fixed bugs relating to data portal preview graphs displaying incorrectly, and am responsible for implementing designs and fixing bugs on the main ICOS website. I am also responsible for user support at the Carbon Portal, including helping users register for and use Fileshare, the Jupyter Collaboration Service, and our internal mailing lists.
What excites you about working at ICOS?
I love working for an organisation that supports research, especially in a globally critical area like climate science. It's exciting for me to use my knowledge and skills to ensure that our data is freely available and presented in an accessible way for both scientists and the general public, and I'm very happy with the work that I've been able to do so far to improve the experience of using the data portal and ICOS website.
Nertila Gojani, Project Coordinator
Joined Carbon Portal in August 2025
What's your professional background?
My professional background is rooted in project management and coordination, with a specific focus on EU-funded and international development projects. Prior to my current role, I served as an EU Coordinator and Project Manager at National Institute of Aquatic Resources part of Technical University of Denmark, and a Programme Manager for the Embassy of Sweden in Pristina in Kosovo. I also have significant experience in the public sector, I have worked for the Government of Kosovo, where I oversaw donor coordination and EU funds management. I hold an MSc in Food Safety and Risk Analysis from University College of Dublin and a BSc in International Agribusiness from University of Wales Institute.
What are your main responsibilities?
I coordinate external projects across the Carbon Portal, monitor financial development including assisting with budgeting, financial tracking and reporting. In short, as a project coordinator, I support the team to keep external projects organised, aligned, and moving forward.
What excites you about working at ICOS?
The idea of countries coming together beyond borders, united by a shared goal to understand and protect our climate for the future, is truly powerful. I believe that through joint efforts, not only on climate issues but also on other complex challenges, we can achieve better, faster, and excellent science. Above all, I always say that workplaces are about the people and the team around you, and I am lucky to work with an amazing team.
Stijn Naus, Data Steward
Joined Carbon Portal in September 2025
What's your professional background?
I've worked as an atmospheric scientist for around 10 years, mostly on the interpretation of observations on various gases with the use of transport models and statistics.
My research topics have ranged from forest fires and urban greenhouse gas emissions to quantifying remote methane leaks with satellites.
What are your main responsibilities?
As data steward I am responsible for data uploads for the PARIS project to the Carbon Portal. I also work as a scientist on carbon cycle research at Wageningen University.
What excites you about working at ICOS?
Not coming from a data management background, I enjoy learning about it at the Carbon Portal. It's also exciting to be able to access such a vast network of people with many backgrounds quite easily through ICOS.
Valter Sundström, Software Developer
Joined Carbon Portal in December 2024
What's your professional background?
I have been writing software professionally since 2009, and personally since 2005. In that time, I've covered quite a broad range of areas and technologies. Professionally I have worked on games for PC, Nintendo DS and web, various frontend development, mobile apps for Android, iOS and Blackberry, high-load/low-latency backend services in Elixir, firmware for synthesizers, and a lot of tooling and other things in-between. Personally, I've had a love for learning as many programming languages as possible and what makes each of them special, which also resulted in a lot of experimentation with my own language designs. A few years ago I took a work break to get a BSc in physics, and then found the position at the Carbon Portal.
What are your main responsibilities?
Software development. Maintaining and improving the core data and metadata back-end services powering the portal.
What excites you about working at ICOS?
I have always wanted to apply my technical knowledge in ways that I find valuable for the world, which has not always been easy or possible. Previously, I worked quite a lot with interactive e-learning material for mathematics and science, and recently I aimed to get into technical work within science/academia. Supporting research infrastructure at the Carbon Portal is a great way for me to do that, in the hopes that it may help move the needle in some way in regard to climate action. I also appreciate the small team environment we have and my great colleagues.
Robert Grabowski, System Administrator
Joined Carbon Portal in August 2025
What's your professional background?
My background is in systems engineering, with a strong focus on infrastructure and servers. I began my career at Lund University (formerly LDC/Sektionen-IT) in 2004, where I later went on to operate the HPC cluster at LU/Lunarc.
What are your main responsibilities?
My main responsibilities are to ensure that ICOS-CP has a stable and secure infrastructure, and to support the team with the resources they need to do their work effectively.
What excites you about working at ICOS?
What excites me about working at ICOS-CP is the constant exposure to new technologies and the exciting development opportunities that come with it.