Ilias Pechlivanidis is a Senior Researcher in hydrology and water resources at SMHI and the Project Manager of the Dissemination Centre for the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS), which operates under the Copernicus Emergency Management Service. He has close to 20 years of experience in hydrologic/hydraulic research, and has been the principal investigator in European and international projects, focusing on hydrometeorological forecasting at different spatiotemporal scales, science communication to users, cross-cutting applications of earth observations, early warning and user-tailored water and climate services, and environmental change impacts on hydrology and water resources. He has been coordinating SMHI’s operational sub-seasonal and seasonal forecasting service over Europe and the globe and coordinating SMHI’s effort on setting up a European seasonal hydrological forecasting service for the Copernicus Climate Change Service. Finally, he is the Co-Chair of the Hydrologic Ensemble Prediction Experiment (HEPEX) scientific initiative, the Chair of the EGU HS (European Geosciences Union – Hydrological Sciences) Hydrological Forecasting sub-division, a Reference Member at the Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Science (CNDS).