Postdocs at IIASA
2012 Postdocs
Nicklas Forsell (ESM) studies the links between bioenergy, forestry, and agriculture. Originally from Sweden, Forsell comes to IIASA from MINES
ParisTech in France. Bioenergy provides an alternative and renewable
source of energy, but since bioenergy and biofuels are produced on the
same forests and cropland that are used for wood and food production, it’s
important to weigh the costs and impacts. Forsell’s research will examine
how much bioenergy can be produced sustainably, while also preserving
agriculture and forest resources. His work will focus on environmental and
economic consequences of policies, with the goal of providing useful
information for policymakers.
Wei Liu (RPV), originally from China, joins IIASA just after completing a PhD in Wildlife Conservation and Wildland Management at Michigan State
University. There, Liu studied how various conservation and development
programs in the Wolong Nature Reserve in China impacted panda habitat
and populations and the local community there. At IIASA, Liu plans to take
his research further, by developing models and scenarios to investigate how
changing land use affects ecosystem service provision and natural hazard
vulnerability in the reserve. His study will also explore how well payment for
ecosystem service (PES) programs work in encouraging conservation, and
how these programs affect people.
2011 Postdocs
Narasimha D. Rao (ENE) is researching the relationship between electricityaccess, livelihoods and carbon dioxide emissions in India. His methods
include economic simulation models of the electricity sector and social
welfare, input-output analysis and carbon accounting. His work emphasizes
modeling policy and institutional influences, such as supply rationing and
energy subsidies. He intends to use his analysis to project the impacts of
different urban and rural consumption patterns on carbon emissions (PhD in
Environment and Resources (September 2011) from Stanford University,
California, USA).
Christina Kaiser (ESM/EEP) is investigating the mechanisms behind the Rhizosphere Priming Effect, i.e. the effect of the release of labile carbon and nitrogen by plant roots on microbial decomposition of soil organic matter. She is developing a model which links carbon and nitrogen input by plants to microbial community composition and function in a spatially
structured soil environment, and analyses how cooperation between microbial functional groups may lead to their coexistence and the emerging of the priming effect (PhD in Ecology (2010) from the University of Vienna).
2010 Postdocs
Nuno Bento (TNT) is investigating growth dynamics in transport in order to find stronger patterns of change in the sector, as well as new ones pointing to a more structural change in response to raising urbanisation and environmental issues (PhD in Economics (2010) from the University of Grenoble, France).
Xiaojie Chen (EEP) is focusing on the evolutionary dynamics in biological and social systems, especially the emergence and stability of cooperation in social networks by using evolutionary game theory and adaptive dynamics (PhD in Dynamics and Control of Complex Systems (2011) from Peking University, China).
2009 Postdocs
Upasna Sharma (RPV) is researching issues related to communication of uncertainty associated with climate forecasts and climate hazard warnings, particularly, how the target audience of these forecasts and warnings interpret and understand uncertainty. She also intends to empirically
explore whether communicating uncertainty in terms that the target audience could relate to would actually lead to an enhanced response on their part (PhD in public policy and climate change (2009) from the School of Management at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay).
Jose Siri (HGC) is researching how urbanization patterns and urban structure affect the transmission of mosquito-borne disease, and how better understandings of the dispersal of humans, vectors and infection in this context can lead to more effective and efficient public health policy
(PhD in Epidemiology (2006) from the University of Michigan).
2008 Postdocs
Jason J. Blackstock (RAV) is focusing on evaluating the scientific, political and economic implications of climate engineering (a.k.a. geoengineering) concepts aimed at limiting the negative consequences of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions (PhD in Physics (2005) from the University of Alberta).
Jacob Johansson (EEP) is developing eco-evolutionary models for explaining fundamental patterns of variation in plant community structures. The project is a part of an international collaborative effort to create a new generation of evolutionarily informed vegetation models for predicting
responses to global climatic trends (PhD in Biology (2008) from Lund University, Sweden).
2007 Postdocs
Christopher Doll (GGI/TNT) is carrying out research on the production of socioeconomic datasets from night-time light satellite imagery and how they can be combined with other data to help answer fundamental questions concerning sustainable development and the human dimensions
of global change (PhD in Remote Sensing (2003) from University College, London).
Edmar Teixeira (LUC) is focusing on the enhancement of the FAO/IIASA Agro-ecological Zones (AEZ) methodology (PhD in Crop Physiology (2006) from Lincoln University, New Zealand).
2006 Postdocs
Tapas Mishra (POP) studied the consequences of stochastic demographic systems on economic growth and development by exploiting their non-stationary temporal and spatial features (PhD in Economics (2005) from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium).
Katsumasa Tanaka (PCC) is working on an inverse estimation of the global carbon cycle, atmospheric chemistry, and climate system. He is particularly interested in climate sensitivity and its learning aspect to get an insight into the uncertainty in future climate projections (PhD in Meteorology (2007) from the International Max Planck Institute for Earth Systems Modelling (IMPRS-ESM), Hamburg, Germany).
