Loredana Sementini, Managing Director
Loredana is a co-founder of Applica and has been Managing Director since its inception. She has long experience in coordinating research projects and international networks of experts and Government officials as well as organising conferences and workshops and managing the production and publication of many major reports published by the European Commission, including all seven Reports on Economic and Social Cohesion. An Italian, she is fluent in English and French.

Terry Ward, Director of Studies
Terry Ward was a senior research officer in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Cambridge for many years working on economic policy questions. He co-founded Alphametrics in the UK, of which he is Managing Director, in 1983, and Applica in 1992. Since then he has undertaken a great many studies on economic and social issues for the European institutions, directed several large scale international research projects and assisted in the preparation of a number of major Commission reports. He has unparalleled knowledge of European data on economic development, employment and labour markets, social protection, income distribution, and education and training.

Lydia Greunz, Senior economic analyst and Head of regional policy division
She has a PhD in Economics and was a senior research officer at the Department of Applied Economics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles for many years, working and publishing on a wide range of economic policy issues relating to regional development with a special focus on the role of innovation, knowledge spill-overs and externalities. Since joining Applica in 2006, she has been involved in a number of projects for DG Regional Policy of the European Commission and has been project manager on many of the more recent ones. She is currently responsible for coordinating the Evaluation Helpdesk of Cohesion policy concerned with reviewing evaluations and evaluation plans (for DG Regional Policy and DG Employment), organising summer schools on evaluation issues and providing on-site support to Managing Authorities.

Nirina Rabemiafara, Senior Economic and social analyst
Nirina joined Applica in 2001 and since then has acquired extensive experience in comparative analysis at the European level. She has been a key member in the project on the EU Labour Market Policy database since 2001 and She was responsible for the coordination of the French version of the last five Reports on Economic and Social Cohesion published by DG Regional Policy. She is a member of the Evaluation Helpdesk team reviewing  evaluations and evaluation plans (for DG Regional Policy and DG Employment) and she is responsible for Applica of all the studies undertaken within the framework contract which supports DG Employment in the impact assessment for the design and preparation of policies and programmes, evaluation and monitoring. She is a native French and Malagasy-speaker, fluent in English and with a working knowledge of Spanish.