Riccardo Lanari was born in Naples in 1964 where he graduated with honors (1989), in Electronic Engineering, at the University of Naples Federico II. In the same year he began his research activity at IRECE-CNR and then at IREA-CNR of which he was director from December 2010 to September 2021, which represents one of the most relevant concentrations of researchers operating in the Earth Observation sector of the Italian public research system. Riccardo Lanari has carried out research activities in the Earth Observation sector for more than 30 years, with particular reference to the development of new techniques for the numerical processing of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data acquired in conventional and interferometric (InSAR) mode, and to their applications in Geosciences. In these fields he is the author of a book, two patents and more than 500 publications, with more than 21,000 citations (H-index=68, source: Google Scholar). Riccardo Lanari has been Visiting Scientist in several international research centers, including the Institute for Radio-Frequencies of the German Space Agency (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen (Germany, 1991, 1993-1994 and 1995), the Institute for Space and Astronautical Sciences (ISAS) in Sagamihara (Japan, 1993) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena (California, 1997, 2004 and 2008). In the latter case, he received from NASA a Recognition (in 1999) and an Award (in 2001) for the research carried out within the SRTM space mission, dedicated to the generation of a digital terrain model of a large part of the Earth, obtained thanks to the processing of data acquired in 2000 by an InSAR system installed on board the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Furthermore, he is a member of the Advisory Group of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) for the first and second generation COSMO-SkyMed missions (from 2015 to 2018 and then from 2021), of the Advisory Group of the European Space Agency (ESA) for the ROSE-L missions (from 2020), Sentinel-1 Next Generation (from 2021) and Harmony (from 2024), of the expert group of the National Copernicus User Forum (for the Ground Motion service) to support the development of the PNRR program called IRIDE (from 2022 to today), and is an expert (from 2022 to today) of the Italian delegation of the European Copernicus Program, for the Space Program Committee. Riccardo Lanari was awarded the IEEE Fellowship in 2013, the Guido Dorso Award (Research section) in 2015, the Christiaan Huygens Medal of the European Geosciences Union in 2017, the IEEE GRSS Fawwaz Ulaby Distinguished Achievement Award in 2020, and the title of Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2023.