Former Project Staff

Lisa Biber-Freudenberger is evaluating the benefits and risks of bio-economic strategies and innovations for the achievement of the UN Sustainability Goals (SDGs) based on different indicators. She is interested in cross-cutting issues between human development and biodiversity including topics such as conservation, climate change, infrastructure development and agriculture.

Neus Escobar has her expertise in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing and Social LCA for the sustainability evaluation of agriculture-based systems. She has hands on experience in economic modeling (i.e. GTAP) for Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) quantification. She is currently focused on developing approaches for Consequential LCA, with the interest of studying emerging supply chains in the Bioeconomy, by considering innovation transfers, international biomass trade and sociopolitical contexts.

Angela Gubelt was working on the identification and characterization of high potential future technologies for the bioeconomy based on the development of specific indicators for key enabling technologies (KETs), inspired by the European Commission’s initiative of defining KETs for the European economy. Her research mainly relied on a multistage survey of expert interviews and literature research.

Duy Nong is an environmental and energy economist with work experience in Australia and the United States. He has extended a couple of computable general equilibrium (CGE) models to conduct research on climate change, environment and energy related issues with publications in Energy Economics, Energy Policy, and Journal of Cleaner Production among the others. His research interest was to employ the CGE modeling technique to assess the global dynamic impacts of the bio-based transformation pathways in the chemical sector, as well as to construct a theoretical model to examine the overall impacts of the bio-based transformation pathways.

Kirsten Selbmann-Lobbedey was comparing national of national bioeconomic policies (including regional and local levels) in the selected project countries Argentina and Uruguay also with regard to the active promotion of bioeconomic transformations. The focus was on governance in the agricultural sector, and in particular on the impact of pesticides in soya production as a result of the expansion of agricultural land in the countries.

Salwa Haddad is interested in modelling the bioeconomy using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) economic model (i.e. GTAP model). She is currently focused on assessing the impact of a rapid expansion of bio-based materials (i.e. bioplastics) on land use, land use change and related GHG emissions at a global level.

Amit was working as research assistant in the field of GIS and data management in this project. He was involved in development and maintenance of the project data base in collaboration with Center for Development Research (ZEF)’s data management team and partners at Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). His other research interests and academic expertise lie in GIS and remote sensing based management of water resource, agriculture, food security, climate change, socioecological systems, ecosystem services, biodiversity, & sustainability.