**About the Editors**

**Justino Mart´ınez** was born in Girona, Spain, in 1966. He received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, in 1991 and 1995, respectively. His research started in the field of relativistic thermodynamics in the context of gravitational collapse. Currently, he develops his task as a Scientific Researcher with the Physical Oceanography Department, Institut de Ciencies del Mar, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Barcelona, Spain. He has been involved in the SMOS mission since 2009. During this period, his research has been developed in SMOS L1 corrections, the forward model implementation, and he has been involved in the generation of L3 and L4 SMOS products, as well as in their validation tasks. His recent work has centered on retrieving the Arctic sea surface salinity from SMOS data.

**Ver ´onica Gonz´alez-Gambau** was born in Huesca, Spain, in 1981. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in telecommunication engineering from the School of Telecommunication Engineering, Universitat Politcnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, in 2006 and 2012, respectively. In 2006, she joined the Passive Remote Sensing Group of the Signal Theory and Communications Department, UPC, where she was involved in the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) payload on- ground characterization, in the framework of SMOS pre-commissioning activities. She also collaborated with the SMOS Level 1 software development and data analysis of the Microwave Imaging Radiometer by Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS) instrument validation campaigns. In 2007, she was a UPC Researcher, in collaboration with the Barcelona Expert Center (BEC), Barcelona, Spain. She is currently a Research Scientist with the Institut de Ciencies del Mar-Consejo Superior ´ de Investigaciones Cient´ıficas (ICM- CSIC), the SMOS mission co-leading institution, Barcelona, Spain, where she is responsible for the advance Level 1 error correction techniques and in-orbit validation procedures. She is working on the development of algorithms for the SMOS brightness temperatures improvement, and assessing the impact of these techniques on the quality of the geophysical retrievals.

**Carolina Gabarro** received her B. Eng. degree in Telecommunications Engineering (1998) and her Ph.D. degree in Ocean Science (2004) from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, ` Spain. Stagiaire, Young Graduate Trainee and contracted at ESTEC, ESA from 1997 to 1999 in the Netherlands, and later at ACRI-SA, France (1999), working on ocean color remote sensing. Since 2000, she has been working at the Institute of Marine Sciences ICM-CSIC and Barcelona Expert Centre on Remote Sensing, and has been on its permanent staff since 2013. Her main work has focused on the ocean and ice products from SMOS mission and other radiometers. From 2005 to 2010, she was part of the Expert Support Laboratories team of SMOS selected by ESA. She is now studying the capability of low frequency and L-band radiometers to measure several characteristics of the Arctic ice (ice thickness, ice concentration, salinity). She is currently a Spanish delegate for the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC). Her research interest includes microwave remote sensing of the ocean and the Cryosphere. She has 35 publications in CSI journals and has made more than 50 contributions to international conferences.

**Estrella Olmedo** was born in La L´ınea de la Concepcion, Spain, in 1979. She received her ´ B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from the University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, in 2001 and 2007, respectively. Her research started in the field of dynamical systems and applied mathematics in the context of computation of quasi-invariant tori. Then, she was with Deimos Space S.L.U in European Space Agency's (ESA) projects related to the design of the future European Space Surveillance System. Since 2012, she has been a Researcher with the Physical Oceanography Department, Institut de Ciencies del Mar, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Barcelona, Spain. Her current research includes signal and data processing of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) data, studies of oceanographic applications of the remotely sensed salinity, and analysis of the marine turbulence.
