Luc Abbadie is a professor and researcher at the Sorbonne. His work focuses on the interactions between biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles, ecosystem functioning, ecological engineering, and urban ecology. He defines himself as a simple professor of ecology. Luc nevertheless has years of experience in research, teaching, and scientific management in his chosen field. His passion for ecology goes back a long way. Like all children, he was fascinated by questions of nature and science. But soon a transition took place in him. During his secondary studies, this simple interest in nature was transformed into a desire to act to protect it. This happened at the beginning of the 1970s, a decade that began with the European year of nature protection. Environmental issues were then only in the infancy of their media coverage. In 1975, the year he entered Sorbonne University to study for a DEUG in Natural and Life Sciences, he founded the Nature & Société association dedicated to environmental education. After completing his master’s degree in natural sciences, he took the green route by enrolling, still at Sorbonne University, in a DEA in ecology, in 1980, and the following year began his thesis on primary production and the nitrogen cycle in the savannah, a subject that sent him to work in Côte d’Ivoire for two years. On his return in 1983, he defended his thesis. Three years later, and following a stint teaching at secondary school, he passed the CNRS recruitment process and was recruited as a researcher in ecology. “It was a miracle. I entered the CNRS at a time when ecology was still very little developed and taught. At that time, ecology at the CNRS came down to a simple post of a project manager (CM), then occupied by Robert Barbault, one of the pioneers in the field. Luc Abbadie then devoted himself fully to research on the dynamics of nitrogen and carbon in ecosystems. But very soon after that he joined research management structures at the CNRS. He rose through the ranks to become deputy scientific director of the CNRS Environment Ecology Institute in 2006. In 2015, he took part in the creation of the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, which he directed until 2020. In 2017, the Sorbonne University Alliance launched an Environmental Transition Institute (ITE) led by a group of researchers and teachers, of which he is a member. He became its first director in 2019.
Charles University Environment Center, Biology Centre CAS SOWA Infrastructure
Jan Frouz is a professor of Environmental Science at Charles University and director of its Environmental Centre. He is the director of the SoWa (soil and water) research infrastructure at the Biological Centre of the Czech Academy of Science, which examines the question of how the interactions between plants, soil and soil biota determine the gradual, successive changes of soils, and subsequently whole ecosystems, and how we can use this knowledge in the restoration of ecosystems. Jan’s research focuses on understanding how soil biota (fauna and soil microflora), plants and the soil matrix interact and how these interactions drive changes of ecosystem during succession and in response to other major drivers such as large disturbances, manmade land-use change or global change. Further topics of research include: ecosystem restoration after mining and other disturbances, with particular attention on the restoration of the soil part of ecosystem and the recovery of soil processes and functions; the role of soil-based organisms in the modification of their environment, nutrient cycling, and soil formation; invertebrate microbial interactions; carbon storage in soil and SOM transformation in soil; soil and soil biota in heavily disturbed ecosystems such as arable fields, post-mining sites, etc.; and above- and belowground interactions and their role in ecosystem development.
Bogdan Jaroszewicz is head of the Białowieża Geobotanical Station of the Faculty of Biology at the University of Warsaw. He describes himself as: “...a forester by education but during my career I switched my research interests several times. Starting from botany (dendrochronology) at the MSc level through entomology (ecology and taxonomy of daylight butterflies) at the PhD level to recent plant-animal interactions and functioning of forest ecosystems.” Bogdan’s research activities focus on plant-animal interactions, especially in forest ecosystems. These cover, inter alia: the impact of large herbivores on vegetation, frugivory, zoochoric seed dispersal, pollination, ecology of soil seed banks, etc. Another interesting question is: how climate change influences range limits and distribution of species and how plant-animal interactions interplay in the process of plant migrations and resulting in shifts in their range limits. He is a member of the Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative (GFBI) scientific team, which was established in 2016 and brings together scientists from 90 institutions around the world. The GFBI is an international interdisciplinary team that has set itself the task of better understanding the large-scale processes and patterns accompanying forest ecosystems.
Jeroen van den Bergh is an Endowed professor at School of Business and Economics, Spatial Economics at Vrijé. He teaches and researches the interface of economics, environmental science and innovation studies. His current interest is the application of evolutionary and innovation economics to stimulate a transition to a sustainable energy system, and the economics of climate change and policy. Since September 2007 he has been ICREA research professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and (distinguished/bijzonder) professor of Environmental and Resource Economics at VU University Amsterdam. From 1997 to 2007 he was professor of Environmental Economics at VU University Amsterdam. He is an elected fellow of the Tinbergen Institute Research School and the Netherlands Network of Economics (NAKE), and was a member of the Energy Council of the Netherlands, of the advisory council of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, and of the Committee Genetic Modification (COGEM), as well as an elected member of The Board of Directors of the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE). He has been chairman of various committees of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) in the fields of social sciences, climate change and environmental sciences. He is a member of the scientific board of the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) in Vienna, a member of the editorial board of six international journals, and editor of the book series “Advances in Ecological Economics” for Edward Elgar Publishers, UK. He was awarded the Royal/Shell Prize 2002 for research related to sustainable development and energy. He has supervised 21 finished PhD theses and published more than 160 articles in international journals, as well as 16 books.
Charles University SEEPIA Center , Charles University Environment Center
Milan Ščasný (PhD 2006, Charles University) is Senior Research Fellow and the Head of Environmental Economics and Sociology Unit at the Environment Centre and a lecturer at the Institute of Economic Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, and works with the University of Warsaw, the Prague University of Economics and Business, and the OECD. In the past, Milan has also collaborated with the Economics Institute at the Czech Academy of Sciences (CERGE-EI), the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE, Poland), and Industrial Economics (Cambridge, USA), and carried out consultation studies for ECHA, Health Canada, OECD, and WHO Europe. His research has focused on consumer behaviour, the valuation of non-market goods, particularly of health risks, the external costs assessment, and energy and economic impact assessment using various models (TIMES-CZ, CGE, E3ME-CZ, EE MRIO). Milan is Coordinator of the large-scale GEOCEP project (2022-2026) and Deputy Coordinator of another two (GEMCLIME 2016-2021, ECOCEP 2014-2018), all on excellence in climate and energy economic modelling funded through the European Commission’s H2020 MSCA Research And Innovation Staff Exchange programme. He is a scientific coordinator of the GACR EXPRO project on “Frontiers in Energy Efficiency Economics and Modelling” (2019-2023). He has been involved in more than 30 research projects funded through European Commission RTD programmes and another 30 financed by various funding agencies operating in the Czech Republic. Milan has also worked with OECD on residential energy efficiency (EPIC Project), OECD-CIRCLE Program, and recently he is involved in OECD’s SWACHE health benefit valuation project. He is a member of the Czech Government Council on Sustainable Energy and RVVI’s Climate. He conducts regular courses on Environmental Economics at the Institute of Economic Studies.
Karl W. Steininger is a Professor of Climate Economics and Sustainable Transition at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz. He also serves as chair of the doctoral school at the Department of Economics, where he has been on the faculty since 1990. Before coming to Graz, he earned a Master’s Degree from the University of Vienna, followed by a Fulbright grant for graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Vienna. He was on the faculty at the Technical University of Vienna and with the World Banks Environment Department in Washington, D.C. Karl’s research focuses on the economic impacts of climate change and long-term low-carbon transition, analysing options such as adjustments in spatial planning, technological development in industry, or enhancing the supply of renewable energy, including solar. This involves the fields of environmental and resource economics, transport economics, spatial economics, international economics, and public finance. His more than 100 publications on climate change, global change and international economic issues have been published in journals such as Nature Climate Change, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Global Environmental Change, Environmental and Resource Economics and Ecological Economics, his books with Springer and Edward Elgar. He heads the Wegener Center’s research group Economics of Climate and Environmental Change, and is speaker of the University of Graz’s research group on Climate and Global Change, President of the Austrian Economic Association (NOeG), Chair of the Monitoring Group of the Paris Agreement and Transport at the national transport norming body FSV, past chairman of the Board of the Climate Change Centre Austria, and past chair of the Chapter of Environmental and Resource Economics of the German Economic Association (Verein für Socialpolitik). He writes reviews for the world’s top journals in his field and is an advisor to multiple research funding organizations.
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