Dr. Elena Xoplaki is a Senior Scientist at the CMCC Foundation – Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change in Italy and serves as Principal Investigator of the ERC Synergy Grant EUROpest (Grant No. 101166700). In EUROpest, she leads the climate research component, focusing on high-resolution palaeoclimate modelling, multi-proxy climate field reconstructions, and the integration of climate data with societal dynamics to understand the regional diversity of epidemic outcomes in Europe between 1300 and 1800 CE.

She is a recognised expert in Mediterranean and European climate variability and change, with core research interests in climate and weather extremes (including heatwaves, floods, droughts, and compound events), paleoclimatology, climate reconstruction and model intercomparison, and the influence of large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns on regional climate. She has a strong interdisciplinary profile bridging climate science, environmental history, and modelling.

She is currently Co-Chair of the ITU/UNEP/UNFCCC/UPU/WMO Global Initiative on Resilience to Natural Hazards through AI Solutions and has played leading roles in numerous international research projects funded by the European Union, Switzerland, Germany, and the United States.

Dr. Xoplaki holds an MSc in Meteorology and Climatology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and a Ph.D. in Natural Sciences from the University of Bern, Switzerland. From 2011 to 2025, she was Akademische Rätin at the Department of Geography, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany, where she also served as Head of the Climatology, Climate Dynamics and Climate Change Research Group from 2020 to 2024.

She has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications and is a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (EurASc).