Exceptional young scientists awarded

The winners of the annual Peccei and Mikhalevich awards for Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) participants have been announced. These awards will enable two participants from the 2019 YSSP to return to the institute for an additional three months to continue their research projects.

The awards are given annually for outstanding papers from the previous year’s YSSP cohort. Candidates are nominated by the program director of the relevant IIASA research program and assessed by a committee comprised of one member from each research program. Each candidate’s paper is evaluated based on its quality, originality, and relevance. The final decision is made by IIASA Director General Albert van Jaarsveld.

Peccei awards are named in honor of IIASA alumnus Aurelio Peccei and recognize policy-related research, while Mikhalevich awards, named for IIASA alumnus Vladimir S. Mikhalevich, are aimed at mathematically and methodologically oriented research.

The 2019 YSSP Peccei and Mihalevich Awards Winners

Felicia Chang from the University of California, USA has won the Peccei Award for her study: “Concurrent temperature and precipitation shifts in historical and historical natural-only model simulations”

IIASA Program:  WAT.
IIASA Supervisors: Peter Greve, Yoshihide Wada

Nicolas Choquette-Levy from Princeton University, USA won the Mikhalevich Award for his study: “The impact of risk sharing mechanisms on smallholder farmer climate adaptation strategies”

IIASA Program: ASA, RISK, POP.
IIASA Supervisors: Matthias Wildemeersch, JoAnne Bayer, Wolfgang Lutz

Honorable Mentions

An Honorable Mention goes to Rory Gibb from the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research, University College London, UK for his study on: “Interacting effects of land use, climate and socioeconomic change on Lassa fever in West Africa”

IIASA Program: ESM.
IIASA Supervisors: Piero Visconti, Tamas Krisztin 

An Honorable Mention goes to Roope Karoonen from the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, University of Helsinki, Finland for his study on: “Cultural evolution of sustainable behaviors: pro environmental tipping points in an agent-based model”

IIASA Program: ASA.
IIASA Supervisor: Nikita Strelkovskii

Past award recipients

Last edited: 05 March 2020