Francesco Barbato is a Policy Officer at the ‘Space Data for Societal Challenges and Growth’ Unit in the Directorate General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs of the European Commission since September 2018. He works on the industrial uptake of Copernicus data, on the H2020-Space’s Work Programme and on Copernicus’ international relations. He joined the European Commission in 2008 at DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology where he managed the EU’s R&D programme on Big Data technologies and the Public Private Partnership underpinning it, and contributed to develop policy and innovation support initiatives for the European Data Economy. Francesco holds a university degree in Earth Sciences from the University of Rome and he is specialized in Remote Sensing of the Earth.