Nikolaos Tsakiridis received his engineering diploma and PhD from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His research focuses on the development and application of explainable artificial intelligence techniques in Earth Observation data, covering all tiers from in situ and laboratory to remote sensing data. He has been involved in multiple EU-funded projects focusing on both improving the accuracy of predictions as well as understanding the underlying associations identified by the models. Most predominantly, these models are applied to improve food security with a particular emphasis on soil data, in support of the European Green Deal Strategy, the EU mission “A Soil Deal for Europe”, and EU Soil Strategy for 2030. His other research interests include big data analysis and systems engineering.