Institute Faculty
Institute Co-Directors (click here to see brief biographies)
Jill Jäger (Co-Director)
Neil Leary (Co-Director)
Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer (Co-Director)
Mahendra Shah (Co-Director)
Institute Faculty (click here to see brief biographies)
Walter Baethgen
Tariq Banuri
Janos Bogardi
Tom Downing
Günther Fischer
Dipak Gyawali
Barbara Huddleston
Amy Lynd Luers
Wolfgang Lutz
Reinhard Mechler
Karen O’Brien
Oladele Ogunseitan
Anand Patwardhan
Fabio Pittaluga
Colin Polsky
Jan Sendzimir
Institute International Advisory Committee (click here to see list)
Institute Mentors and Supervisors (click here to see list)
Institute Co-Directors
Dr. Jill Jäger
Jill Jäger is a member the Steering Group of the Initiative on Science and Technology for Sustainability (ISTS: http://sustainabilityscience.org). She received her B.Sc. degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia (UK) in 1971 and was awarded her Ph.D. in geography (climatology) by the University of Colorado (USA) in 1974. Dr. Jäger has worked as a consultant on energy, environment, and climate for numerous national and international organizations. In September 1994 she joined the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA, Laxenburg) as Deputy Director for Programs, where she was responsible for the implementation and coordination of the research program. From October 1996 till May 1998 she was Deputy Director of IIASA. From April 1999 till October 2002, Dr. Jäger was Executive Director of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. Her main field of interest is in the linkages between science and policy in the development of responses to global environmental issues.
Dr. Neil Leary
Neil Leary works in the International START Secretariat in Washington, DC where he is director of a multi-year project titled Assessments of Impacts and Adaptations to Climate Change (AIACC). The project, which is jointly administered by START, the Third World Academy of Sciences, and the United Nations Environment Programme, supports nearly 300 scientists and students in 50 developing countries in their investigations of climate change vulnerabilities and adaptations. Neil is the author, co-author and co-editor of 20 papers, book chapters and books on climate change, including co-editor of the IPCC report Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Previous positions include Head of the Technical Support Unit of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), senior economist in the Office of Policy of the US Environmental Protection Agency, and Assistant Professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he also served as Acting Director of the Environmental Studies Program. Neil obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, in 1988 and his B.A. degree from Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, in 1980.
Dr. Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer
Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer is leader of a project on "Risk, Modeling and Society" at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland. At IIASA, she has worked on interdisciplinary teams exploring the social and economic issues related to environmental and technological risks, including issues of risk estimation, risk-benefit analysis, risk perception, culturally determined risk construction and risk burden sharing. Her current interest is global change and the risk of catastrophic natural disasters, and she is investigating options for improving the financial management of catastrophic risks. She has recently completed a study of flood risk on the Tisza river in Hungary that combined catastrophe modeling with stakeholder participation for the design of a national flood insurance pool. In collaboration with the World Bank and InterAmerican Development Bank, her project is working closely with developing country policy makers to improve the financial capacity of disaster-prone countries to respond to extreme events. In collaboration with Kyoto University, she organizes an annual conference on Integrated Disaster Risk Management. Dr. Linnerooth-Bayer has over 100 publications in the area of risk, and she is on the editorial board of three international journals on this topic.
Dr. Mahendra Shah
Since February 2001, Mahendra Shah is a Senior Scientist and Coordinator of United Nations Relations at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, in Laxenburg, Austria. His present work is concerned with sustainable development and global environmental change, integrated ecological-economic modeling and policy analysis, differential vulnerable population and millennium development goals. During the period 1997 to 2000, Mr. Shah served as Executive Secretary to the CGIAR System Review, based at the World Bank in Washington. He coordinated and contributed substantially to the recommendations of the 3rd Systems review report and prepared a popular version, “ Food in the 21st century - from Science to Sustainable Agriculture” published by the World Bank. He was a Special Advisor to the Secretary General of UNCED during 1991-92 and prepared the Earth Summit report "The Global Partnership for Environment and Development -A Guide to Agenda 21." During 1988-89 he served in the UN Office of the Coordinator for Afghanistan as Director of Information, preparing the first rehabilitation and reconstruction plan for Afghanistan. In the period 1984-86, he was Director of Monitoring and Evaluation Division, UN Office for Emergency Operations in Africa. He developed a comprehensive and multi-sector information system that became the most credible and timely source of information and was the basis of United Nations appeals and donor briefings, resulting in the mobilization and delivery of over $4.1 billion in relief aid to some 35 countries in Africa. During 1977-83, he was a Senior Scientist with the IIASA Food and Agriculture Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, participating in the development of a general equilibrium model of the world agricultural economy, and coauthored the UNFPA/FAO/IIASA Land Resources for Populations of the Future Report. Mr. Shah received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1971 and he started his career at the University of Nairobi and the Ministry of Economic Planning in Kenya. He has co-authored a book on development planning in Kenya.
Institute Faculty
Walter Baethgen
Walter E. Baethgen is the Director of the Program for Latin America and the Caribbean of the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction (IRI) of Columbia University. He obtained his B.S. degree in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Uruguay and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the USA. From 1978 to 1982 Dr. Baethgen worked as a researcher for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries of Uruguay. His principal area of research in the position was Cropping Systems. From 1984 to 1987 he was a Project Assistant at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where he conducted research in Plant Nutrition and Cropping Systems and lectured on Soil Science and Computer Applications to Agriculture.
Before joining the IRI, Baethgen was a Senior Scientist in the Research and Development Division of IFDC (International Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development Center) where he worked mainly in Information and Decision Support Systems for the Agricultural Sector (1987-2003). During 1989/90, he acted as a consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in Colonia, Uruguay. In 1990 he was stationed with IFDC in Montevideo, Uruguay, to establish and coordinate regional research programs in Latin America in collaboration with National and International institutes.
Dr Baethgen has acted as a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the United Nations (FAO, UNDP, UNIDO), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Bank and the Inter-American Institute for Agricultural Science (IICA). He participated as Principal Investigator in several NOAA and NASA International research programs. He also acted as consultant for the governments of Brazil, Paraguay, Guatemala and Uruguay, and for the private sector in Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela. He was a lead author for IPCC’s Second (1995) and Third (2001) Assessments Reports, and the review editor for IPCC’s special issue on Technology Transfer (2000). He is a member of the advisory committees of the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction (IRI) and of CLIMAG (Research Program for Climate Forecasts Applications in Agriculture, World Meteorological Organization). He is also a member of three Expert Teams of Open Program Area Groups (OPAGs, WMO): “Impact of climate change/variability on medium to long range prediction for agriculture” and “Verification Systems for Long-Range Forecasts”, and “Developing Guidance on Climate Watches”. He was also a steering committee member during the establishment of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI). Dr. Baethgen has over 60 publications to his credit.
Tariq Banuri
Dr. Tariq Banuri is the Director of the Asia Centre of the Stockholm Environment Institute. His work focuses on conceptual as well as practical issues in sustainable development policy—including the analysis of natural resource management, integrated assessment methodologies, macroeconomic and trade policies, institutions and governance, and community development. He has broad experience in Pakistan in policy development through a combination of research and analysis and organizing and leading multi-stakeholder participation. He has served on national as well as international policy development bodies and research networks, including the board of governors of Pakistan’s central bank, Pakistan’s Environmental Protection Council, the Steering Committee on Higher Education established by the President of Pakistan, and the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in which he was a convening Lead Author. In recognition of his services to research and education, the President of Pakistan conferred on him the medal Sitara i Imtiaz (SI).
Janos Bogardi
Janos J. Bogardi was born in 1946 in Budapest, Hungary. Hungarian by birth, he became a naturalized German in 1974. Following studies at the Technical University of Budapest in Hungary and the University of Padua in Italy, he received a doctoral degree from the University of Karlsruhe in Germany in 1979. He has two doctoral degrees, honoris causa from the universities of Warsaw in Poland and Budapest in Hungary in 1996 and 1997, respectively. Currently, he is Director of the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, Bonn, Germany. Formerly he worked as research associate/assistant and chair professor at various universities in Hungary, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Thailand, and work as hydrologist in Consulting Engineering Companies in Germany. From 1995 to 2003, he worked for UNESCO in Paris, France. His activities within its International Hydrological Programme included the UNESCO Interdisciplinary Initiative for Sustainable Development in the Volga-Caspian Basin, Nizhny Novgorod (2002) and his being the Coordinator of the "Volga Task Force" of UNESCO's Interdisciplinary Initiative for the Sustainable Development of the Volga-Caspian Basin (2001-2003).
Thomas Downing
Dr Thomas E. Downing (PhD, Geography, Clark) is the Executive Director of the Oxford office of the Stockholm Environment Institute. He was formerly Reader in Climate Policy in the Environmental Change Institute of the University of Oxford, and has been the science advisor to the UK Climate Impacts Programme, and research fellow in the University of Birmingham and National Centre for Atmospheric Research. His major interests are vulnerability and adaptation to climate change and climatic hazards, with an emphasis on developing methods in participatory integrated assessment (primarily using agent-based social simulation). He has published over 100 papers, books, reports and book reviews. Recent projects include the UK national assessment of climate change and demand for water (CCDEW), agent-based simulation modelling in support of integrated water management in Europe (FIRMA), seasonal climate forecasting in southern African and potential implications for sustainable livelihoods (CLOUD), frameworks and methods for vulnerability and adaptation to climatic hazards and climate change (APF and NAPA).
Günther Fischer (brief bio forthcoming)
Dipak Gyawali
Mr. Dipak Gyawali: engineer-political economist and Nepal's former minister for water resources; research director of the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition ISET; member of the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology and the New York Academy of Sciences. Mr. Gyawali was also member of the International Advisory Board of the US-based Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which produced the study on Human Choice and Climate Change and member of the International Research Committee of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies in Colombo. Mr. Gyawali has served on several government commissions related to Himalayan water and energy resources development in Nepal. He has published extensively both academically and in the popular press on water resource, environment and development issues. He helped found Nepal Water Conservation Foundation and edits its journal WATER NEPAL. Until 1996, he served as Chairman of Grameen Swabalamban Bikas Kendra, a grass-roots NGO working for rural poverty alleviation in Nepal. He has served as Chairman of Duryog Nivaran, a South Asian initiative promoting alternative perspectives on disaster mitigation, particularly floods, droughts and conflict-related stress. His recent publication includes Rivers, Technology and Society (Zed, 2003) and Aid Under Stress (edited with Sharma, Koponen and Dixit, Himal Books, 2004).
Barbara Huddleston
Barbara Huddleston has spent most of her professional career in the international arena, first with the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Agriculture, and subsequently at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). While at IFPRI from 1976 to 1984, she established her credentials as a food security expert, specialising in issues related to food trade, food reserves and food aid. Following her move to FAO she served as Secretary to the Committee on World Food Security and Chief of the Food Security Service until her retirement in 2002. In this capacity, she promoted FAO’s work programmes in the field of early warning, food security information, vulnerability assessment, vulnerable liveihood profiling and participatory extension. She holds an MA in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and an MPhil in Economic History from The George Washington University. She is the author or editor of several books and articles in her fields of expertise, and has served on various editorial boards and public service commissions through the years. Barbara continues to make her home in Rome, together with her three adopted Malawian children, and remains active professionally, as a consultant to the Rome-based food agencies, parttime faculty member of Trinity College, Rome campus, and member of the Scientific Advisory Committee, Global Environmental Change and Food Security (GECAFS), a joint project of IGBP, IHDP, and WCRP.
Amy Lynd Luers
Amy Lynd Luers is a research associate at the Center for Environmental Science and Policy (CESP) at Stanford University. Her research focuses on assessing the vulnerability and resilience of human-environmental systems. From 2000-2002 she was a research fellow with the Research and Assessment Systems for Sustainability Program centered at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Prior to her doctoral research, Luers worked for 10 years on rural water development and watershed management projects in California and Latin America. She holds a PhD in Environmental Science and a M.A. International Policy Studies from Stanford University and a B.S. and a M.S. in Environmental Resources Engineering from Humboldt State University.
Wolfgang Lutz
Wolfgang Lutz is the Leader of the World Population Program. He joined IIASA in October 1985.
Professor Lutz holds a Ph.D. in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania (1983) and a second doctorate (Habilitation) from the University of Vienna. He has worked on family demography, fertility analysis, population projection, and the interaction between population and environment. He has been conducting a series of in-depth studies on population-development-environment interactions in Mexico, several African countries, and Asia. He is the author of the series of world population projections produced at IIASA and has developed approaches for projecting education and human capital. He is also principal investigator of the Asian MetaCentre for Population and Sustainable Development Analysis funded by the Wellcome Trust with headquarters at the National University of Singapore. Professor Lutz is author and editor of 28 books and more than 150 refereed articles (including some in "Science" and "Nature"). He serves on the board of directors of the African Population and Health Research Center in Nairobi, Kenya; the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany; and the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C., USA.
