The Team
Detlef Van Vuuren is a full professor in Integrated Assessment of Global Environmental Change at the Faculty of Geosciences, as well as a project leader at PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. He is internationally recognized for his research on responses to global environmental problems, and one of only 7 people world a part of the IAMC, WCRP, and was influential in the development of representative concentration pathways (RCPs) used in IPCC’s assessments and has published more than 360 scientific articles.
Paul Lucas is a policy researcher and Integrated Assessment Modeler in the Sustainable Development team. His work focuses on international climate policy and the role of the environment in sustainable development. With regard to sustainable development, he looked at the role of the environment in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), from a long-term perspective, even after 2015. His more recent work focuses on integrated analyses of achieving long-term sustainability goals, for which he specifically looks at the role of the environment in the post-2015 development agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Victhalia is a PhD candidate at Utrecht University and visiting researcher at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). She holds a MSc. in Energy and Environment and a bachelor degree in Geophysical Engineering. Recently, her research was focused on analysing interactions between climate change and the energy system as part of the ISIPedia project. For PICASSO, she works with the energy, air pollution and climate change cluster for finding synergies and trade off between these issues and in relation to the SDGs.
Eartha Weber joined the PICASSO project as a PhD candidate. She holds a MSc. in Epidemiology, and a Bachelor’s degree in Global Health and Biology. She previously did research on air pollution and fetal development, as well as machine learning and cardiovascular disease outcomes. Eartha will focus on the health climate, demographic, and environment cluster of the project. She will further develop the IMAGE framework in relation to Energy Policy and Air Pollution in relation to cardiovascular outcomes .
Andries Hof is a Senior Researcher on international climate policy at PBL for the Department of Climate, Air and Energy. He is also a guest researcher at Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University. His special interests are the costs and benefits of climate change adaptation and mitigation, climate agreements, the use of integrated assessment models in informing climate policy decisions, and synergies and trade-offs with other sustainable development goals. Andries has authored about 60 publications in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals
Vassilis Daioglou currently works at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, and is a visiting researcher at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. His research interests lie on the climate-land-energy-water nexus, and developing methods to assess their physical and socio-economic interactions. He completed his dissertation on Dissertation The role of biomass in climate change mitigation: Assessing the long-term dynamics of bioenergy and biochemicals in the land and energy systems under the supervision of Prof. dr. D. van Vuuren.
Frederike is a PhD candidate in the PICASSO project where she researches global resource demand and flows and their impacts on sustainability applying the IMAGE model. Frederike holds a BEng in Product Engineering (Hochschule Furtwangen) and a MSc in Industrial Ecology (Leiden University and TU Delft). During her bachelor studies she focused on product sustainability and circular economy and wrote her bachelor thesis at the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA). During her master studies, she specialized in sustainability assessment methods such as LCA and EE-IOA and completed her studies with a thesis on the sustainability of the Olympic Games using EE-IOA.
Kyra Orbons joined the PICASSO project and lead a project called ‘A review of Existing Model-Based Scenarios Achieving SDGs: Progress and Challenges’. a She holds a MSc. in Physics and a Bachelor’s degree in Physics and Astronomy. Her masters thesis was entitled ‘ Directing Quantum Dot Emission in LSCs’ under supervision of prof. Albert Polman.
Elke Stehfest is a senior scientist at PBL. She has worked on a wide range of land-related topics in global integrated assessment, like crop modeling, land-use dynamics, emissions from land use and land-use change, land-based mitigation options, biofuels, dietary changes, and long-term scenarios of agriculture. She coordinates the development and application of IMAGE’s Land model, also with external partners (WUR, VU, PIK). Furthermore, she has contributed to International Assessments like the OECD’s Environmental Outlooks, and UNCCD’s Global Land Outlook.
Geanderson Ambrósio holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics (2013) and a MSc (2015) and PhD (2019) in Applied Economics. In 2021, he completed postdoctoral research in a study evaluating non-Carbon related ecosystem services provided by tropical forests in South America. In March 2021, he joined PICASSO as a postdoctoral researcher and uses the model IMAGE-Land to assess the cluster Agriculture, Biodiversity and Nitrogen by contributing to a better representation of land-use dynamics in the modeling framework. He is also a guest researcher at EMBRAPA (Brazil), PIK (Germany) and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (Netherlands).
Shridhar holds an MSc in Engineering & Policy Analysis (TU Delft), specializing in advanced policy modelling & simulation methods, macro-economics and applied policy ethics. He wrote his master’s thesis on the representation of climate impacts on economic welfare in IAMs. As a PhD candidate with the PICASSO project, his research focuses on modelling the dynamics of economic and developmental inequalities across climate futures and interventions.