Mentors for 2018 Cohort of Mentees

Venkata Ramayya is a professor of mechanical engineering and currently, the Sustainable Energy Engineering Chair and currently leads the Thermal Engineering research group in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jimma University. His basic research interest is in the areas of renewable energy.
He has successfully supervised 28 master’s thesis, 97 bachelor’s projects and 3 PhD’s (as external advisor) on topics relating to energy, biogas, hybrid systems and biomass pyrolysis. He has published more than 40 peer-reviewed publications, 100 conference proceedings and a book chapter in an international book publication on sustainable energy related issues.

Venkata has investigated and co-investigated 30 projects (completed or ongoing) most of which are sponsored by international bodies such as the European Union, International Association of Universities, African Union and Development Innovation Fund (World Bank).

He is a member of prestigious societies such as Society for Automotive Engineers, New York Academy of Sciences, American Chemical Society and the Ethiopian Society of Mechanical Engineers. He is also a life member of the Indian Society for Heat and Mass Transfer and the Indian Society for Technical Education.



Venkata has served on several committees and key positions which includes, amongst others, as Head of Center for Energy Studies, VIT-Deemed University, Vellore, India; Member, Board of Studies, Department of Mechanical Engineering for SCSVMV Deemed University, Kancheepuram; Students` Research Project Coordinator, Faculty of Technology, Jimma University, Ethiopia; Member Academic Commission, Faculty of Technology, Jimma University, Jimma, Ethiopia among others.

He has been a member of the International Advisory Committee of recognized international conferences including the International Conference on Green Energy technologies, 15th-16th April, Bahir Dra University, Ethiopia, 2016; and the International Conference on Emerging Research and Advances in Mechanical Engineering, VEC, India, March17-19, 2009.

Ahmed Hamza H. Ali is a Professor of Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning at Assiut University, Egypt and a Certified Professional Consultant on Renewable Energy Systems and Energy Efficiency.
He obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Assiut University, Egypt in June, 1986 and December, 1992 respectively. Ahmed Hamza bagged a doctoral degree in engineering from Muroran Institute of Technology, Japan in 1999. He worked as a Professor of Energy Systems at Fraunhofer Institute for Energy Systems and Environmental Engineering, UMSICHT, Germany from March 2006 to April 2008, the Director of Research Excellence Center for Energy Resources and Management (Dean Level), the Chairperson of Energy Resources and Environmental Engineering Department, and a Professor of Renewable Energy Systems, all at the Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST) in Alexandria, Egypt from May 2010 to January 2015.



His areas of expertise include basic and applied research in Renewable Energy (Solar Energy Cooling and Heating Nocturnal Radiation Cooling, PV systems design and performance) Systems, energy and buildings (incl. HVAC) and Industrial Energy audit and energy efficiency. In 1994, he became a member of International Solar Energy Society (ISES) till date. Some of the awards to his credit include the Finland Government Award (June 1985 – September, 1985), Japanese Government (MONBUSHO) Scholarship), Japan (October, 1994 – March, 1998), Association of International Education Professional Honours, Japan (April 1998 – March, 1999), the distinguished scholar award from the Arab Fund Program, Kuwait, (March 2010 – February, 2011), and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship, Germany (March 2006 – April 2008).

Ahmed Hamza has published more than 150 papers (over 65 in refereed International Journals, with H index 13), six books and five book chapters.

Ellen Morris, Ph.D., is a world-recognized expert on energy and international development, with a particular focus on policy analysis, research, strategy development, and writing on energy access, gender equality, and enterprise development. She teaches Energy and Development at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and is a Faculty Affiliate at the Center on Global Energy Policy. At Columbia, Ellen serves as a mentor in the Women’s International Leadership Program and is the faculty advisor for the Women in Energy student group at Columbia. Ellen is also an Ambassador for The Clean Energy Education and Empowerment Initiative that was launched by the Clean Energy Ministerial to close the gender gap in STEM fields and serves as a Technical Expert for the Clean Energy Solutions Center. In addition to her faculty appointment, Ellen is the President and Founder of Sustainable Energy Solutions, an international consulting services company that promotes the increased use and deployment of clean energy technologies and services as a means to support economic development and reduce poverty in developing countries. She has recently led pioneering work on gender and energy for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to create the first ever Policy on Gender Mainstreaming for Energy Access along with a Legal Directive for gender assessments in energy projects. Ellen is also a Founding Partner of Embark, a social enterprise that is focused on radically increasing the scale of energy access by empowering thousands of clean energy entrepreneurs in low-income countries. Ellen was also the co-founder of Arc Finance, an NGO that promotes and expands access to end-user finance for modern energy.


Ellen serves as an advisor and Board Member for social enterprises focused on clean energy, including EnVenture (Uganda), Simpa Networks (India), Earth Spark International (Haiti), and Empowered by Light (Zambia) and is the Energy Program Advisor for the Clinton Global Initiative. She started her career in clean energy working for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in the geothermal program. In the early part of her career, she worked as a Fellow on the Science, Space and Technology Committee of the U.S. Congress and was an exploration geophysicist for Texaco. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in geophysical engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and a doctoral degree in marine geophysics from the University of Rhode Island.

Professor Donatien Njomo holds the position of full Professor of Energy and Environment and Head of the Environmental Energy Technologies Laboratory at the University of Yaounde 1, Cameroon. He teaches graduate level courses including Solar Energy and Renewable Energy Technologies, Photovoltaic and Concentrating Solar Power Systems, Energy and Climate Change, Geopolitics of Energy, Energy Efficiency, Heat Transfer, Thermodynamics. Professor Njomo has already supervised 14 PhD dissertations and 60 Master theses dealing with solar energy and other renewable energy technologies. He has published more than 65 scientific papers dealing with solar energy and renewable energy technologies. He has carried out studies of solar radiation propagation and attenuation through tropical atmosphere and experimental ground based measurements of solar irradiation in Cameroon. He also used 5 km resolution Meteosat satellite imagery to extract solar radiation falling on the Cameroon territory. Professor Njomo has succeeded to develop a powerful non-linear model to simulate the functioning of the solar collectors in tropical areas. He has also developed solar stills to produce safe drinking water from brackish water. He has succeeded to map deforestation and the resultant carbon fluxes in the Congo Basin forest using SPOT-Vegetation satellite imagery for the years 2000 to 2004. In 2001, Professor Njomo received the prestigious Senior Associate Award, for the period 2001 – 2006, from the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) based in Italy, for his contribution to the advancement of non-conventional energy in Cameroon and other developing countries. Professor Njomo also holds a patent on an improved double combustion wood burning cookstove.

Professor Nathwani is the founding Executive Director, Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy (WISE) and holds the prestigious Ontario Research Chair in Public Policy for Sustainable Energy. He is also the Co-Director, with Prof Joachim Knebel (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany), of the consortium ‘Affordable Energy for Humanity (AE4H); a Global Change Initiative’ comprising 150 energy access thought leaders, researchers and practitioners from 50 institutions in 22 countries. The overarching vision of AE4H is to drive the scientific, technological and social innovations required for a cleaner, low carbon energy system that also meets the challenge of universal energy access.



As WISE’s Executive Director, he leads the institute’s research and development efforts to foster the development of emerging technologies that includes the full range of emerging energy technologies including solar, wind, bioenergy, geothermal, integration of distributed energy systems with energy storage, ICT for smart grid and micro-grids for off grid supply. His current focus is on competitive energy policies to enable the innovations required for the transition of the global energy system to a lower carbon energy economy.



Prior to his appointment at the University in 2007, Professor Nathwani worked in a leadership capacity in the Canadian energy sector over a 30 year period. He brings a unique combination of academic perspectives with extensive experience in the business sector that includes corporate planning and strategy, energy sector policy developments, integration of environmental sustainability with in power system planning, regulatory affairs and research program management.



Prof. Nathwani serves on several boards at the provincial and national levels. He is the lead Scientific Advisor to the Waterloo Global Science Initiative, established by the Perimeter Institute and the University of Waterloo, and is the lead author of the Equinox Summit-Energy 2030 Blueprint. He is chair of the board of the Canadian University Network of Excellence in Nuclear Engineering; member of the Ontario Smart Grid Forum; board member of the Ontario Centre of Excellence; member of the Clean Tech Advisory Board (DFAIT), Council for Clean and Reliable Electricity; member of the Advisory Panel for the Science Media Centre of Canada; and Advisory Board Member of Sustainable Waterloo. Professor Nathwani has over 110 publications related to energy and risk management, including seven books and is a Registered Professional Engineer (PEO) in the Province of Ontario, Canada.

Mattheos Santamouris is the Anita Lawrence Chair in High Performance Architecture at the University of New South Wales, Australia, the Director of the Laboratory of Building Energy Research at the University of Athens, Greece and also a former President of the National Center of Renewable and Energy Savings of Greece, Greece.



He is also a professor at the University of Athens, Greece and visiting Professor at the Cyprus Institute, Cyprus; Metropolitan University of London, United Kingdom; Tokyo Polytechnic University, Japan, Bolzano University, Italy; Brunnel University, United Kingdom and National University of Singapore, Singapore.



Mattheos serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Energy and Buildings, former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Advances Building Energy Research, Associate Editor of the Solar Energy Journal and actual or past Member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Solar Energy, Journal of Buildings and Environment, Journal of Sustainable Energy, Journal of Low Carbon Technologies, Journal of Open Construction and Building Technology, Sustainable Cities and Society and of the Journal of Ventilation. He has edited series of books on Buildings, Energy and Solar Technologies published by Earthscan Science Publishers in London.



He has edited and authored 14 international books on various topics related to heat island, solar energy and energy conservation in buildings published by Earthscan, Springer, among others. Mattheos is a huest editor of twelve special issues of various scientific journals and scientific coordinator of many international research programmess and author of almost 260 scientific papers published in peer reviewed international scientific journals. He is a reviewer of research projects in 15 countries including USA, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Sweden, among others, and also an expert in various International Research Institutions.

Evelia is a Professor and Researcher at the Institute of Ecology, Fisheries and Oceanography of the Gulf of Mexico at the University of Campeche, Mexico. Currently, she is in charge of the integrated coastal management and marine policy laboratory. She is a biologist with a Master and a PhD in Marine Policy from the University of Delaware, USA. As an expert in policy and governance for over 27years, she is passionate about the coastal areas and the oceans, especially on the American continent where she has done her studies and research. She is one of the pioneers in Mexico on coastal and marine management projects, and has lead several innovative projects on marine policy international agendas, the effects of climate change on coastal and marine zones, and coastal governance. She was the Minister of the Environment of her home state Campeche for the six years of a governmental term (2009-2015), in charge of the design and implementation of the state environmental policy for forests, climate change, air quality, water, coastal zones, solid waste, environmental education and natural protected areas. She also promoted cross cutting sectorial sustainable policies and building environmental governance. Evelia was the national coordinator for the 6th National Communication on climate change for the UNFCCC; and is currently involved as Lead Author for the Special Report on Oceans and Cryosphere for the IPCC. She is also the representative of Mexico at the Inter-American Institute for the Global Change Research; and developed the environmental policy agenda for the national policy commission.

Bipasha Baruah is the Canada Research Chair in Global Women’s Issues and a tenured full professor in the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research at the University of Western Ontario. Prof. Baruah conducts interdisciplinary research on gender, development and globalization; women and work; and social, political and economic inequality. Her research on women and property ownership and women’s employment in renewable energy and resource efficiency has influenced policy within governments, financial institutions and non-governmental organizations. Dr. Baruah has 12 years of professional experience with organizations such as the United Nations Development Program, Asian Development Bank, World Resources Institute, The Energy and Resources Institute, Self-Employed Women’s Association, the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, the International Development Research Centre of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and Global Affairs Canada. The Royal Society of Canada named Dr. Baruah to The College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2015. “The College” is Canada’s only national system of multidisciplinary recognition for the emerging generation of Canadian intellectual leadership. Every year, it names individuals who have made exceptional professional contributions to Canada and the world within 15 years of completing their doctorates. Dr. Baruah’s current research program is aimed broadly at understanding how to ensure that a global green economy will be more gender equitable and socially just than its fossil-fuel based predecessor.

Marta Molinas works with access to electricity and solutions to energy poverty, focusing on development of microgrids in remote areas. She is a professor at the Department of Engineering Cybernetics of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and supervises Master and PhD students in topics related to electricity access in remote areas. She is also co-founder of the non-for-profit organization, RenPeace (www.renpeace.org) that works in collaboration with students and professors around the world in the development of microgrid projects in the field (e.g. microgrids).



Marta Molinas holds a Dr. Eng. Degree in Electrical Engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology. She is currently remotely supervising Master and PhD students in Africa, South America and Asia. She is associated as remote supervisor for University of the People (https://www.uopeople.edu ). She works in collaboration with Engineers Without Borders and the IEEE Empowering a Billion Lives (http://empowerabillionlives.org/) initiative, that focuses on solutions to energy poverty and technologies for humanity.

Akiça Bahri is currently Professor at the National Agricultural Institute of Tunisia. Previously, she worked as Coordinator of the African Water Facility (AWF) at the African Development Bank from 2010-2015; as Director for Africa at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) from 2005-2010; and as Director of Research at the National Research Institute for Agricultural Engineering, Water, and Forestry (INRGREF) in Tunis, Tunisia. She has academic and professional experience in water resources management and the agricultural use of marginal waters and biosolids and their impacts on the environment. She has also been involved in policy and legislative issues regarding water reuse and land application of sewage sludge. She has authored numerous papers and reports. She is a member of different international scientific committees and has received international honors from the Guinness Foundation (1984), the International Foundation for Science (1993), the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (1996), and the 2009 “Prof. C.N.R. Rao Prize for Scientific Research”. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California at Davis from January to June 2005. She holds an Agricultural Engineer degree from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Agronomie de Toulouse, France, a Doctor-Engineer degree from the Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse (France) and a Ph.D. in Water Resources Engineering from Lund University (Sweden).

Professor Nathalie Tufenkji received her Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from McGill University in 1999 and went on to Yale University, where she earned the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical and Environmental Engineering. Nathalie’s graduate research at Yale focused on contaminant transport and filtration in groundwater and riverbank environments. She received the American Water Works Association Academic Achievement Award for best doctoral dissertation in the field (2006), as well as the Becton Prize for Best Ph.D. dissertation in the Faculty of Engineering & Applied Science at Yale (2005).


Dr. Tufenkji returned to her alma mater as Assistant Professor in 2005 and is presently a full Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at McGill University where she holds the Tier I Canada Research Chair in Biocolloids and Surfaces. Dr. Tufenkji leads a research group working in the area of (bio)colloid-surface interactions with applications in protection of water resources, engineering of biosensors and antimicrobial materials, and development of safe nanotechnology. Professor Tufenkji was awarded the Early Career Research Excellence Award by the Faculty of Engineering at McGill University (2010), a Fulbright Scholar Award for tenure at Harvard University (2012), an Excellence in Review Award from the journal Environmental Science and Technology (2012), and the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award in Science and Technology (2014).


Beyond her research and teaching roles, Dr. Tufenkji also serves as Associate Director of the Brace Center for Water Resources Management at McGill and has co-chaired several major international conferences. She also serves on the editorial boards of the journals Environmental Science and Technology, npj Clean Water, Water Research, Colloids and Surfaces B, Advances in Colloid and Interface Science, and Frontiers in Chemical Engineering.

Ambrish Chandra FIEEE is a full professor of Electrical Engineering at École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), Montréal since 1999. His educational background includes B.E. degree from the University of Roorkee (presently IITR), India, M. Tech. from IIT Delhi, and Ph.D. from University of Calgary, in 1977, 1980, and 1987, respectively. Before joining as an Associate Professor at ÉTS in 1994, he worked as a faculty at IITR. From 2012-15, he was director of multidisciplinary graduate program on Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency at ÉTS.
The primary focus of his work is related to the advancement of new theory & control algorithms for power electronic converters for power quality improvement in distribution systems & integration of renewable energy sources. He has published more than 300 research articles in these areas. The key differentiator of his work is in its simplicity and practicality of new solutions and has had significant impact, which is now extensively used in the industry. He was instrumental in writing six review articles on power quality, which have become de-facto standards world-wide with total Google citations more than 11400, h-index 45, i10-index 130. He is coauthor of John Wiley book ‘Power Quality – Problems and Mitigation Techniques’.


Dr. Chandra is Fellow of many organizations, such as, FIEEE, FCAE, FEIC, FIET (UK), FIE (India), FIETE (India) and registered as a Professional Engineer in Quebec. He is IEEE PES/IAS Distinguished Lecturer and has given lectures in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Xi’an, University of Toronto, many cities in India, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt and keynote speeches in many international conferences. He is Chair of subcommittee on ‘Power Quality’ of IEEE IES. He is the Guest Editor for special issue of journal Energies on ‘Power Quality in Microgrids Based on Distributed Generators’. He received IEEE Montréal Best Technical Chapter Award – for PES in 2012, 2014, 2017, ‘Outstanding Contribution’ as Chair of IEEE Montréal Section’s PES Chapter, 2010. He is the recipient of highest Canadian award on electrical power engineering 2018 ‘IEEE Canada P. Ziogas Electric Power Award’.

Olayinka S. Ohunakin is an internationally recognized professor of energy systems. He is a Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Covenant University, Nigeria. He is a Visiting Professor, Pan African University Institute of Water and Energy Sciences (PAUWES), c/o University of Tlemcen, Algeria; a Beahrs Fellow, College of Natural Resources, University of California, Berkeley; Visiting Scholar, Center for African Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He is also the Head, The Energy and Environment Research Group (TEERG), Department of Mechanical Engineering, Covenant University, Nigeria.

He is an energy and environmental expert with vast knowledge in renewable energy technologies, distributed generation and hybrid grid systems, design and evaluation of low-carbon systems, energy modeling, climate modeling, energy audits, cost-benefit analysis of renewable energy investments, energy efficient building simulations and designs, energy economics, policies, finance and management, with in-depth researches in energy conversion and management, energy efficiency and conservation techniques, conventional energy sources and power plants.

He is a registered member of several professional bodies; he has written several articles widely published on energy in leading peer-reviewed ‘high impact’ journals cutting across Springer, Elsevier, Sage and Taylor & Francis publishers (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jNzSObcAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao). He is currently serving in the capacity as a Guest Editor in Chief to a special issue of the International Journal of Photoenergy, and reviewer/editorial membership to numerous energy journals. He has also presented several positions papers in conferences and workshops both locally and internationally.

He has been involved in several National Assignments for Nigeria at the UNFCCC. He has served as a consultant on several projects for the Worldbank/IFC, AfDB, KfW, AFD, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), UNDP-GEF project on Energy Efficiency in Nigeria, etc. He is also a consultant to several NGOs and private bodies (both foreign and local).

Andy Hira is a Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University, one of the top comprehensive universities in Canada. He was trained as a specialist in Latin American political economy. He spent a number of years investigating economic development, trade and finance policy. He wrote a book summarizing the lessons for Latin America from East Asian success in industrial policy- the same would apply for Africa. He began working on energy issues during his time with the US government, where he analyzed regulatory issues for energy and natural gas in Latin America. Since then, he has worked on a number of issues, from biofuels to energy regulation to integration of energy markets. More recently, he has turned his attention to renewable energy and climate change. He has also completed an assessment of Ghana’s mining policies in 2018, that is available as a public report. His field research experience opened his eyes to the potential for economic growth in Africa that could reduce poverty in the short-term.

Hayley Fowler is Professor of Climate Change Impacts in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University. A hydroclimatologist with over 15 years of experience, she has analysed the impacts of climate change and variability on hydrological systems, publishing more than 90 ISI-cited articles since 2000. She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Fellow.

She is a Contributing Author to two chapters of the forthcoming IPCC 6th Assessment Report, and an author of the next UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3). She is also chair of the Global Energy and Water EXchanges (GEWEX) Hydroclimatology Panel (GHP) sub-daily precipitation cross-cut and Chief Editor of the international journal “Frontiers in Interdisciplinary Climate Studies”.

Her internationally-renowned research examines recent trends in precipitation extremes and future projections and their impacts on flood and drought risk with over £10M of funding. She has also been instrumental in developing new downscaling techniques to bridge the gap between modellers and users of climate information (e.g. UKCP09 Weather Generator) and developing new guidance for urban drainage design. Her research also focuses on climate change impacts on the Himalaya region.

She collaborates widely, particularly with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (USA) and the University of New South Wales (Australia) where she has held Visiting Professorial Positions.

Meg Holden (PhD, 2004, New School for Social Research) is professor of urban studies and geography and director of the Graduate Program in Urban Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Her research program examines urban policy, planning and social aspects of sustainable development intentions and transitions in cities and communities. Her book Pragmatic Justifications for the Sustainable City: Acting in the common place was published in 2017 by Routledge. She is the principal investigator of a multi-year international research project that is investigating the policy and lived outcomes of initiatives to build model sustainable neighbourhoods worldwide.

Her research areas of interest are integrated approach to sustainable development in urban planning and policy, model sustainable neighbourhood planning and development, including sustainability certification systems and assessment of sustainable development in cities

Professor Stuart Pimm is the Doris Duke Chair of Conservation at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. He is an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and the President of Saving Nature, a non-profit. He is a world leader in the study of present-day extinctions and what we can do to prevent them. Pimm received his BSc degree from Oxford University in 1971 and his Ph.D from New Mexico State University in 1974. Pimm is the author of 350 scientific papers and four books.

Prof. Pimm wrote the highly-acclaimed assessment of the human impact to the planet: The World According to Pimm: a Scientist Audits the Earth in 2001. His commitment to the interface between science and policy has led to his testimony to both House and Senate Committees on the re-authorization of the Endangered Species Act. He has served on National Geographic’s Committee for Research and Exploration and their Big Cats Initiative. In addition to his studies in Africa, Pimm has worked in the wet forests of Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil for decades and is a long-term collaborator of the forest fragmentation project north of Manaus, Brazil. His international honours include the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006), the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (2010), and the International Cosmos Prize (2019).

Prof. Pimm considers the broad geographical patterns of species distributions, especially threatened species, producing strategic maps to guide conservation actions. (See www.biodiversitymapping.org). He then focusses on key areas to produce tactical maps for conservation actions, implementing them through the non-profit he directs, Saving Nature (www.savingnature.com). These actions prioritise connecting isolated habits to create more continuous landscapes that can hold viable populations. In addition, he also considers endangered, but widely-ranging, species that come into conflict with people and seeks practical solutions to reduce human-wildlife conflict.

Christopher Bryant has a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science (1970) and has been Professor at the Universities of Waterloo (1970-1990) and Montréal (1990 to 2014) and is currently Adjunct Professor, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph (1912 onwards), and he is also Adjunct Professor, Geography Department, University of Montreal (2014 onwards).
Christopher Bryant has published many articles in different journals, a large number of book chapters, many books and monographs; many Reports to different governments and agencies; many other publications and book reviews; and he has made almost 600 presentations during his career.
His fields of research are: agriculture and food production in and around cities and metropolitan centers; food security and food insecurity; tourism development; community development; land use planning; strategic development planning for communities, organizations and agriculture and other economic activities; sustainable development; resilience building for communities exposed to flooding and climate variability; adaptation of agriculture and tourism development to climate change and variability. He is placed in the top 4 to 5% of the over 16 million researchers on Research Gate. He has also directed or co-directed one of the largest number of doctoral and masters students, and many of his doctoral students now have positions as professors in different universities or in government ministries or agencies.

Dr. Atchia is a senior Mauritian consultant in the Education, Curriculum development and planning and in the Environmental Education sectors, with wide international experience especially in national and regional coordinator positions. He has been a Programme Director at UNEP (Chief, Environmental Education and Training Unit) in Nairobi from 1986 to 1996, responsible during the same period for the “International Environmental Education Programme” of UNESCO/UNEP, active in over 100 member states. He gained his professional experience in both developing countries (Africa, Asia, and South America) and in Europe/North America/Australia. He is a graduate from these Universities: Calcutta (B.Sc with Distinction): London (BSc); Chelsea College of Science and Technology (Postgraduate diplomas in Microbiology, 1st class); Institute of Biology (MIBIOL); Salford in Manchester (MSc, PhD, DSc). Dr Atchia has extensive experience as a specialist and trainer in environmental education and sustainable development education (a field now called ESD which he is credited to have launched in 1993); national curriculum development and planning; science education; integrated environmental management (a field which is he is credited of having launched, with the publication by John Wiley in 1995 of ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS, Integrated Environmental Management, Editors Michael Atchia and Shawna Tropp).


Dr Atchia was an Associate Professor at the MIE (1974-1986), as part of the original team which carried out the mauritianisation of the school curriculum and wrote the first text-books. After retirement in 2003 he spent 2 years at the Ministry of Education Mauritius, as Senior Advisor to the Minister. As a Project Manager especially for large international or regional projects, he has designed several projects (preparation of project documents and budgets), and was as team leader in charge of organisation and administration, monitoring, evaluation and follow-up of projects related to educational reform, environment and sustainable strategies. Furthermore, Dr Atchia is an educator and trainer with world-wide experience (1986-1996) in designing and administering Integrated Environmental Management Training for cadres from developing countries, in collaboration with Universities in Dresden, Geneva, Nairobi, Boston, and Adelaide amongst others. He was responsible for relationships of UN with over 100 centres of Excellence world-wide (mostly top-level Universities) in the specific field of Environment and development.

Dr. Michael MacCracken is a climate change and impacts scientist who has been volunteering as Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs with the Climate Institute in Washington DC since retiring from the University of California in October 2002. His current research interests include human-induced climate change and consequent impacts, climate engineering, and the near-term beneficial effects of limiting emissions of non-CO2 greenhouse gases. From 1968-93 he led studies at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory using computer models to evaluate the climatic effects of volcanic aerosols, land-cover change, nuclear war, and the increasing CO2 concentration. From 1993-97, he served as the first executive director of the interagency Office of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, responsible for encouraging scientific cooperation among nearly a dozen federal agencies, and then from 1997-2002 as senior scientist and executive director of the National Assessment Coordination Office for the first national U.S assessment of the impacts of climate variability and change. Since retiring, in addition to his activities with the Climate Institute (www.climate.org), Dr. MacCracken has also served as President of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (2003-07); as the international atmospheric representatives to the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (2003-11); and as a member of the Synthesis Team for the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (2002-04). In addition, Dr. MacCracken has prepared roughly a dozen legal declarations in support of lawsuits seeking to encourage efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.


Dr. MacCracken earned his B. S. in Engineering from Princeton University in 1964 and his Ph.D. in Applied Science from the University of California Davis/Livermore in 1968. His dissertation involved developing one of the world’s first global climate models and then using it to evaluate the physical consistency of several hypotheses for explaining the causes of Pleistocene ice age cycling.

Dr. Ioannis L. Tsipouridis is a renewable energy engineer with over 40years experience in the renewable energy field and he is currently the Chairman and CEO of R.E.D. PRO Consultants, which he set up after leaving PPC S.A., a consultancy active in the fields of renewable energy and climate change. He holds a PhD in Solar Energy, master’s degree in Fuel and Energy (both funded by Science Research Council Grant) and Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering (funded by Local Education Authourity Grant); all form the University of Leeds, United Kingdom.



Starting with his M.Sc. thesis, he has worked all his life, for the development of Renewable Energy Sources (R.E.S.), as an energy engineer. Simultaneously he has been active in promoting R.E.S. development policies as Chairman of Hellenic Wind Energy Association (ELETAEN). He has served in numerous roles on various projects. ……….. served as the CEO of Public Power Corporation Renewables (PPCR S.A.), Greece (2010- 2013); Director, Office of Deputy Minister for Energy Yannis Maniatis, in the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change (YPEKA), in charge (mainly) for renewable energy matters (2009-2010) and a member, of the Board of Directors of the the Center of Renewable Energy Sources of Greece (2010-2013). Dr. Tsipouridis also worked as a Regional Energy Expert of a European Union PHARE programme where coordinated by the Energy Policy Unit of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Bulgaria; headed the Athens branch of an Energy equipment company, specializing in solar water heaters and energy stoves and sewage treatment unit’s installaions and also served as a Consultant and Editor to “Energy Point”, a commercial energy magaizine.



Between 2003-2010 and 22013-2015; Dr. Tsipouridis served as the President of the Hellenic Wind Energy Association (HWEA), which he cofounded in 1990 and has served as Secretary General (1991-2001) and Vice President (2001-2003 and 2010-2013). For his contribution to ELETAEN and to the development of wind energy in Greece, in 2011 the Hellenic Wind Energy Association awarded him the “AIOLOS” prize. He is creator and Editor of “Anemologia” (1999 – to date), the official Journal of the Hellenic Wind Energy Association.
He has participated in numerous conferences including the historic COP21, as well as COP22 and COP23.

Gregory J. Leng is the creator and Director of the RETScreen Clean Energy Management Software at Natural Resources Canada’s CanmetENERGY research centre in Varennes, Quebec. The RETScreen Software is the world’s leading clean energy decision-support tool and is available in 36 languages coverings 2/3rds the Earth’s population. RETScreen is used by more than 560,000+ energy professionals and decision-makers in every country, as well as by professors at 1,000+ universities and colleges for teaching and research.


Greg’s career is focused on the clean energy market, technology and finance interface and he has been working in the renewable energy and energy efficiency fields since 1987. Prior to joining NRCan, he was based in Hyderabad, India as the India Country Manager (dLA Consultant) for the International Fund for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (IFREE).
He obtained a Master of Science degree from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in Energy Engineering (Solar Energy Engineering) and a Bachelor of Commerce degree (Marketing and International Business) from McGill University.

Dr. Athanasios Dagoumas is an Assistant Professor in Energy and Resource Economics and the Director of the Energy and Environmental Policy Laboratory and at the University of Piraeus. He holds a Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, where he elaborated his PhD in Energy Economics. He has more than 10 years of work and research experience in energy related issues, including working as a Senior Researcher at the University of Cambridge and as a Senior Energy Analyst at the Transmission System Operator and at the Electricity Market Operator in Greece. Moreover he was enrolled as a Special Advisor to the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change in Greece. His extensive experience builds his capacity for an in-depth understanding of multidisciplinary aspects of the energy sector: economic, engineering, environmental and policy. He is keen on developing models for the energy system, the economic-energy-environment (E3) systems and the real energy markets.

Kirsty has 27 years’ experience in international climate and energy policy. Since 2004 she has led an initiative, via affiliation as Associate Fellow at Chatham House, on ‘investment grade’ policy: conditions to enable private investment into renewables/low carbon energy. This has been evidence-based work with a central foundation of direct engagement with leading mainstream renewable energy financiers and senior policymakers.
From 2010-2015 she was Policy Head of the Low Carbon Finance Group, a first-of-kind, financier- led group of senior finance practitioners established to factually assist policymakers’ understanding of conditions to mobilise capital at greater scale. The Group’s 5-year span largely focused on the UK’s Electricity Market Reform process.

Prior to that she published synthesis work on ‘investment grade’ policy, as well as financier perspectives on emerging markets renewables investment (research sessions 2008-2010) and MENA region. In addition, she coordinated private investor input to an early development phase of what became the Green Climate Fund (2011).

In 2016 she published the ‘Finance Guide for Policymakers’, for factual reference tool on who does what in finance and why, relevant for renewables and ‘green infrastructure’, published by BNEF with Chatham House and UNEP’s Frankfurt School centre. She is currently focused on how to create effective institutional engagement with private financiers.

In 2015-2016 Kirsty was a Specialist Advisor to a UK Parliamentary Inquiry into Investor Confidence in the UK electricity sector. She has held several invited international advisory roles including World Economic Forum, UNEP Finance Initiative and has been a reviewer and contributing author to the IPCC.

William Blyth has worked for over 20 years in the analysis of energy security, climate change and sustainable development. He is Director of Oxford Energy Associates, an independent energy research company, and works part-time as a Senior Research Fellow at DFID (UK government’s aid department). In addition, he holds Associate Fellow positions at Chatham House (one of the world’s top think tanks), and at Imperial College London, supporting research on sustainable energy issues. He is an expert in energy sector economics and policies specialising in transitions to a low-carbon economy and energy access in developed and developing countries.


Dr. Blyth is currently leading a team to develop Botswana’s sustainable energy strategy under their SE4All initiative. He carried out a similar role in Rwanda leading a team within the Ministry of Infrastructure, and developed Rwanda’s investment plan for $50m under the SREP. In recent years, he has worked with the World Bank, AfDB, and EBRD reviewing financial flows and the investment needs of the energy sector in general, and mechanisms to support business models that address access to energy for the poorest in particular.

He has recently worked with a wide range of international organisations including the World Bank, African Development Bank, International Renewable Energy Agency, OECD, International Energy Agency, the Electric Power Research Institute, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Institute of Sustainable Development, as well as many UK government departments and institutions. He has published widely on a range of topics related to climate and energy security, and is the author of over 20 peer reviewed papers and books.

William previously worked at the International Energy Agency in Paris, the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen and for AEA Technology Environment. He has a DPhil in Physics from Oxford University.

Dr Kirsten Davies is an academic at Macquarie University’s Law School (Sydney Australia). She has extensive education, policy, governance, management, marketing and board experience. In her career she has held senior management, directorship and chair roles. As CEO of a consultancy business, and through roles with corporate, government and university sectors, Kirsten has worked with expert teams in a diverse range of international and Australian projects and partnerships. Her depth of experience includes leading cultural institutions and community access programs in rural and urban localities.


A committed educationalist and researcher, Dr Davies is widely published and has authored and presented papers at many conferences. At the centre of her work is the engagement of communities. She is the architect of Intergenerational Democracy, a method of whole-of-community engagement and capacity building and the subject of her (2012) book, Intergenerational Democracy, rethinking sustainable development. Kirsten has recently developed an online course on community engagement.


Kirsten holds a Master’s Degree (USyd) ,PhD (USyd) in Sustainable Management and is currently undertaking a second PhD in Law (MQU) . She was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to conduct research in USA, UK and Japan (2002) and was the recipient of the University of Sydney Agri-Management Scholarship for post graduate research (2005). Kirsten was awarded an Australian Government, Endeavour Award – Research Fellowship to undertake sustainability research in Vanuatu (2009) and maintains a close relationship with the South Pacific Region. She was appointed as an Expert Adviser and Lead Author to the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in 2014 (onwards). This role continues to expand her international networks and activities. Kirsten is a member of the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and one of the drafting authors of the recent Declaration on Human Rights and Climate Change.

Hisham Zerriffi is an Associate Professor in Forest Resources Management at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He was previously an Assistant Professor and the Ivan Head South/North Research Chair in the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC. Dr. Zerriffi’s research is at the intersection of technology, energy and the environment, with a particular focus on rural areas of the developing world. Much of his research focuses on institutional factors impacting the diffusion of new technology, determinants and patterns of household energy choice and welfare implications of rural energy use. He is the author of one book and over two dozen articles and book chapters. He was a Lead Author for the Global Energy Assessment’s chapter on Energy for Development and a member of the World Health Organization’s Indoor Air Quality Guidelines Development Group. Prior to joining the UBC Faculty, Dr. Zerriffi was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, Stanford University. Dr. Zerriffi holds a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in Engineering and Public Policy.

Dr. Huong Ha is currently affiliated with School of Business, Singapore University of Social Sciences. She has been affiliated with UON Singapore and University of Newcastle, Australia. Her previous positions include Dean, Director of Research and Development, Deputy Course Director, Chief Editor, Executive Director, Business Development manager, etc. She holds a PhD from Monash University (Australia) and a Master’s degree from National University of Singapore. She was a recipient of a PhD scholarship (Monash University), Temasek scholarship (National University of Singapore), and a scholarship awarded by the United Nations University/International Leadership Academy, and many other scholarships, professional and academic awards, and research related grants.



She has authored or co-edited a number of books including Ha, Huong (2014). Change Management for Sustainability. USA: Business Expert Press, Ha, Huong (2014). Land and Disaster Management Strategies in Asia. H. Ha (Ed.), Springer; and; Ha, Huong & Dhakal, T. N. (2013). Governance Approaches to Mitigation of and Adaptation to Climate Change in Asia. H. Ha, & T. N. Dhakal (Eds.), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; and Ha, Huong; Fernando, Lalitha and Mahmood, Amir (2015), Strategic Disaster Risk Management in Asia, Springer. She has produced about 75 journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and articles in Encyclopedias. She has been an invited member of the international editorial boards of many international journals/book projects; the scientific and/or technical committees of several international conferences in many countries; and international advisory board of many associations. She has also been a reviewer of many international journals and international conferences.

Ashley Cooper has spent the last 13 years travelling to every continent on the planet to document the impacts of climate change and the rise of renewable energy. In that time he has probably seen at first hand more climate change impacts than anyone else. He has documented extreme weather, floods, drought, permafrost melt, glacial retreat, sea level rise, desertification, coral bleaching, emissions, biofuel, tar sands, fossil fuels, coastal erosion, deforestation, fracking, forest fires, sea ice, water resource and every type of renewable energy. As an environmental photographer Ashley has shone a light on the most important issue of our times and his images appear in newspapers, magazines and books around the world, including in his own book, “Images From a Warming Planet”. Ashley lectures widely on his work and works with organisations like World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Climate Outreach to try to get the message out there of the urgency to tackle climate change. Ashley runs two websites www.globalwarmingimages.net and www.imagesfromawarmingplanet.net

Pradipta Halder holds a doctoral degree in forestry from the University of Eastern Finland (UEF) and is currently affiliated with the Business School (UEF) as a Senior Researcher. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Social Sustainability and Bioeconomy with the Department of Historical and Geographical Studies at the UEF. Pradipta is leading a project on consumer adoption wood-based eco-innovations in Finland, India and the Netherlands. He has over ten years of research and professional experiences in the fields of forestry, bioenergy, climate change and bioeconomy from policy and social sciences perspectives.



He has conducted research in Finland, Germany, Croatia, Serbia, India and China. He was a visiting scholar to the Fudan Tyndall Centre in Shanghai and the Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University in Yangling (China). Pradipta has published widely in reputed international journals in the field of energy and environment. Pradipta is also affiliated with the journals such as Biofuels, Energy, Sustainability and Society, and Energy and Environment Research. His current publications can be seen from here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_YSmtJUAAAAJ&hl=en

David Gibson has 32 years’ experience in energy access, utility energy efficiency programs, and facility design and construction. He serves as a Senior Consultant for NRECA International and is the President/Chief Innovation Officer for a consultancy known as Next Grid Collaborative. He holds a master of Liberal Arts Degree in Sustainability and Environmental Management from the Harvard Extension School where he received the Dean’s Academic Achievement Award based on his academic performance. David’s thesis was entitled “Taming a Wicked Problem – Energy Access Planning from an Energy-Poor Perspective. “ His thesis research proposed an enhanced GIS-based energy access decision tool which explores institutional barriers (such as energy consumption subsidies) and enabling environment conditions (such as the “energy addressable market” of households with mobile phones but no access to electricity) in an effort to scale up the market penetration of Solar Home Systems in the ECOWAS region. In an effort to translate his thesis research into practical applications, David is currently working with an off-grid technology service provider to assess the “ease of doing business” among their target countries for initial market rollout. He is also working with the developer of the existing Open Source Spatial Electrification Tool (onSSET) to develop a number of expansion modules to support the initial market rollout of this technology service provider.


David’s experience in Africa energy landscape includes energy access/rural electrification projects in Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda, including Haiti and Philippines which are also developing economies. Some of the projects handled include improved energy access for street markets in Ghana, developing a framework for private investment in rural off-grid electrification projects in Ethiopia, and the development of mini-grid standards and specifications in Tanzania. The clients for these projects include the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the United States Agency for International Development – Power Africa Program (USAID), the Government of Kenya (GoK), and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

Mr. Gibson has also served as a Teaching Assistant and Research Assistant to Dr. Robert Pojasek in support of his Organisational Sustainability course.

He has recently been selected to serve a two-year term on the Student Advisory Committee for Harvard’s Sustainability and Environmental Management Program.

Alexandre Strapasson is an Honorary Research Fellow at Imperial College London and a Visiting Lecturer at IFP Energies Nouvelles in Paris. He also works as an international consultant. He currently lives in Brazil. Until recently, he worked at Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University in the United States. He has been working on energy and environmental sciences, with an emphasis on the global dynamics of energy, carbon and land use, and the sustainable development goals.


Prior to these experiences, Alexandre was Director and Head of Department of Bioenergy at the Ministry of Agriculture of Brazil, working on international collaborations and capacity development programmes with several nations, including African countries. He was also Consultant of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for energy and climate change affairs at the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, participating in UNFCCC negotiations. He is an Agricultural Engineer, holding a Master in Energy from the University of São Paulo (USP), and Ph.D. degree in Environmental Research from Imperial College London, with a Postdoc in Sustainability Science from Harvard.

Xavier Vallvé is co-founder and director of the engineering and consultancy firm TTA in Barcelona, Spain. He holds engineering and master’s degrees from the University of Waterloo in Canada and has more than 25 years of experience in rural electrification with renewable energy and distributed generation projects, autonomous as well as grid tied, renewable energy hybrid technology for islands and isolated villages. This involves complementary interdisciplinary activities in economic, social and management aspects as well as engineering in renewable energy generation and storage. Autonomous off-grid electrification needs to address the needs of potential beneficiaries, from basic access to power to develop income generating activities. Within a village, this can be done with microgrids, individual PV stations or a combination of both but involving the community and establishing an adequate business model for long term sustainable operation.

Xavier is well-experienced in distributed generation and micro grids. He has been involved in research, feasibility studies, engineering, project management and commissioning of many PV rural micro grids in isolated villages in Africa, Asia and South America. He is also an active member in international codes and standards committees on this subject.

He has been project director or lead consultant for private and government clients and also for projects by United Nations Development programme (UNDP), United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), World Bank (WB), European Commission (EC), International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), among others.

He is director and lecturer of the Master degree “Master en Ingeniería y Gestión de las Energías Renovables” at IL3 (University of Barcelona). He is a member of ARE (Alliance for Rural Electrification), and also member of the Board of Secartys.

Dr. Susanne Nies is an expert in European energy policy and regulatory affairs, focusing on electricity and the power sector in Europe. She is currently in charge of strategy, energy policy, stakeholder relationship, corporate communication at the European Network of Transmission System Operators (ENTSO – E). As the Corporate Affairs Manager, she leads the work on Transmission System Operator (TSO) – Distribution System Operator (DSO) interaction (Demand side management, aggregation, distribution transmission interfaces).
Prior to this, she worked for EURELECTRIC, a Brussels-based European Electricity Industry Interface with EU Commission and European institutions. She had the role as Head of Unit Distribution System Department from 2014 to 2015, dealing with Distribution System Operators – smart grids, smart meters, energy efficiency, big data, new downstream, electric mobility, standardisation, relationship TSO-DSO, investments in regulated assets, network codes and framework guidelines. She also headed the Energy Policy and Power Generation Department from 2010 to 2014 where she was dealing with Power Generation, leading 12 industrial working groups, experts missions, conferences and lectures on general energy policies.



Susanne Niels holds a PhD in Political Sciences from Bonn University, and a Habilitation at Sciences Po Paris and Berlin Free University, as well as an economics degree from London School of Economics. Until 2008 she was heading the French Institute for International Relations Brussels branch and was affiliated as a senior researcher to the energy programme of the institute, focussing in particular on oil and gas. She has a long track of academic publications, affiliation to research and lecturing, as well as consulting. In addition, she teaches at the Cologne University/ EWI Summer Classes on Energy policy and Energy Economics. Before focusing on energy policy she worked extensively on transition economies in Eastern Europe, international conflict and social policies.

Apart from being a native speaker of German, she is fluent in written and spoken English, French and Russian languages.

Habashy Ibrahim is a Renewable Energy Specialist with several years of experience in planning, design, engineering and installation of PV power plants in Egypt and beyond. He is currently the Head of the Technical Sector at Greengate Solar where he supervises and leads Engineers who design PV power plants, plan and develop PV projects, oversee installation and quality, as well as coordinate the testing and maintenance of PV plants. As the Technical Head, he is also responsible for hiring, training and mentoring other Engineers and supporting staff.Before joining Greengate Solar, he worked in a similar role as Head of Technical Department at several Renewable Energy companies in Egypt, such as The Engineering Company for Energy and Environment Services, Esolar for Renewable Energy, Sun Network for Energy Solution. He is widely trained and certified in Solar technologies, GIS analysis, systems simulation and modelling.
Habashy Ibrahim holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, and worked for several years in Heavy Vehicle field and in Power Stations Machinery as a trainer prior to joining the Renewable Energy industry.

Bilkisu is an Editor at the BBC World Service in London in charge of multimedia services. As an expert in Communication for Development, Bilkisu is passionate about protecting the environment, especially on the African continent where she has seen her idyllic lush childhood home virtually disappear amidst an urban sprawl. She has pioneered many innovative projects including in her latest role as Nigeria Editorial Lead where she recently launched BBC Pidgin – the first fully digital language service for Africa.
Pidgin is the first of 3 new BBC digital language services to launch in Nigeria – along with Yoruba and Igbo. Bilkisu was also the pioneer editor of the BBC bureau in Abuja Nigeria, the first Nigeria Country Director for BBC World Service Trust and the Launch SBJ for Focus on Africa TV (BBC World News TV).

Bilkisu has had an illustrious career at various levels including Editor, SBJ and presenter, as a highly accomplished international multimedia journalist, working in radio, on TV and online.

Multitalented and multilingual, she has interviewed several high profile personalities including presidents and prime ministers from Nigeria, Ghana, Libya and the UK.



Bilkisu knows Africa very well and is widely travelled across the continent and globally. She has covered major international events for the BBC including the 2008 US Obama elections, Hong Kong handover to China 1997; the Beijing Women’s conference and the lead up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa where she led a 30-strong team of BBC journalists on a road trip across West Africa.

She holds a Master’s degree from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria and has won several awards for academic excellence, as well as the Nigeria Best Actress Award 1992.

In expressing her passion for environmental sustainability, she says, “Information is power. If you empower people with knowledge, they will make informed choices about their environment”.

Charley G. Granvorka is an Economist mainly working within the field of Development and Environment with a particular focus on the Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Her first works initially related to development concerns in the context of the Plantation Economy by comparing the economic performance of Haiti and the Dominican Republic from 1960 to 2015 owing to self-builder data bases.She evolved towards Environmental Economics by analyzing the impacts of natural hazards on the domestic economy at the macro and micro levels using tools such as the Cost-Benefit Analysis and Data processing.



Some of her works are exemplified by a Cost-Benefit Analysis of an Integrated Disaster & Risk Management including a Flood Early Warning System and Temporary multifunction shelters in Haiti under the Umbrella of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre. She contributed to the design of an Eco system based development Master Plan for Andros, the Bahamas upon request of the Inter American Development Bank. As a winner of a national bid of the National Agency for Research, France, she also assessed the social and economical costs of the earthquake and hurricane Dean that occurred in Martinique for 2007 in the fields of agriculture, housing and health.



She has authored papers in collective books or peer-reviewed journals on various topics related to environment, tourism, poverty, risk management, sea governance or urban revitalization, all SIDS specific indexed on www.academia.edu.org. She monitored thesis at the Master 2 level and occasionally reviews blinded papers in environmental Journals (Israel, Romania, United States of America, Algeria). She acts as both an Independent Consultant and teacher and is a member of various Economist Associations and Les Expertes France, which is a network specially dedicated to women created by the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie.



She has been invited-speaker at various high level international meetings; UNEP, New York, Ecole Polytechnique, France, ProEcoServ, Trinidad and Tobago, COP21, Paris, France, UNDP/University of Baranquilla, Columbia.

Luca Petrarulo is a Consultant with 10 years of experience in international environmental projects and research. He holds a Master of Science in Environmental Change and Management from Oxford University and a Master of Arts in Conflict Resolution from Lancaster University. His technical expertise is multi-disciplinary and focuses on climate change (adaptation and mitigation), environment and sustainable development, governance and aid effectiveness (harmonization of donor interventions, regional and international cooperation for instance), renewable energy, transport, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E). He has special interest on projects that links impacts of climate change to environmental changes. This has been mainly developed at the international level working for a variety of clients including the EC, GIZ, DFID, AFD, CDKN, UK DECC, UK FCO. Luca has worked on many high-profile international projects, mainly in Asia and Latin America. For instance, he was one of the key technical experts in preparing the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) of Bangladesh and Nigeria for the global climate Paris Agreement. He also recently led the climate change, energy, and environmental assessment of the EU development assistance to the Pacific region covering 19 countries and territories. Luca is fluent in English, Spanish and Italian.

Steven von Eije has an extensive background in renewable energy with a passion for sustainable development. Steven recently joined Enclude as consultant sustainable business practices to implement and expand the clean energy portfolio. Steven has over 8 years of work experience in the renewable energy sector. At the Energy Delta Institute in the Netherlands Steven developed a strong training background while he gained extensive knowledge on the energy sector in developing countries. Steven gained experience in the development sector while working for Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) in Vietnam. He worked on projects to support the development of local enterprises that delivered clean energy products and services using result based finance mechanisms. Steven acted as Chief Technical Advisor to the award winning Biogas Programme for the Animal husbandry sector of Vietnam.
Additionally, he designed the result-based finance incentive option auction in order to accelerate the development of the advanced clean cookstove sector. As sector leader renewable energy he was responsible for the management of a team of national and international experts which supported the Vietnamese government in their ambition to develop renewable energy.



As Energy Analyst for the Energy Delta Institute, an international energy business school in the Netherlands, Steven has developed and improved executive energy education programs. Furthermore he has acted as a lecturer in several courses on renewable energy and energy transition related topics. He has also consulted for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Energising Development ,Climate and Clean Air Coalition,RVO,SNN (Northern provinces of the Netherlands) EU and Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, among other organisations on various topics such as on renewable energy investment and financial analysis, biogas energy programme, sales of carbon credit, reversed auction for result based finance incentive options for improved cookstove, among others. Steve speaks Dutch, English, French and German languages.

Joanne Jungmin Lee brings a combination of academic and professional experience in environmental policy, renewable energy, corporate sustainability and climate finance. As of February 2018 Joanne is working for World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as a Technical Specialist in the Finance Practice Core Team, based in Hong Kong.



Prior to WWF, Joanne worked at the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in Abu Dhabi as Associate Programme Officer – Renewable Energy Finance, specializing in public finance, risk mitigation and institutional investment. Before moving to the United Arab Emirates, she worked for the United Nations Environment Programme, Wharton Small Business Development Center, Meister Consultants Group, Ceres and GreenWorld Capital in the US. Joanne also worked as a financial analyst at Hewlett Packard in Seoul. She has a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Ewha Womans University in South Korea.

Peter Dauenhauer has a combined background in economics and sustainability of off-grid energy projects. He holds a BA Economics from University of Washington, MSc Economics from University of Amsterdam. His past work has included the design of off-grid projects in developing countries, management of the Malawi Renewable Energy Acceleration Programme (MREAP), sustainability evaluations and feasibility studies for energy access projects. These projects have been conducted in Malawi, Gambia, Kenya and Zambia. He has served as chair and co-chair of the IEEE Power and Energy Society Working Group: Sustainable Energy Systems for Developing Communities (SESDC) since 2014 and leads the Energy Use Task Force. He actively volunteers with Kilowatts for Humanities (KWH) (business model design, data acquisition system, and research support) and with IEEE Smart Village (Malawi development Liaison).



Peter is currently completing his PhD at the University of Strathclyde in Energy for Development. He works at Seattle University as a Faculty Adviser for senior design projects involving data acquisition systems. His current publications are available here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=MKE7M3QAAAAJ&hl=en

Olufunke Alaba holds a doctoral degree in Economics from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She did her post-doctoral research at the School of Economics, University of Pretoria, South Africa. Olufunke is Senior Lecturer and researcher at the Health Economics Unit, School of Public Health and Family Medicine, University of Cape Town, also in South Africa where she conduct research researching on applied microeconometric modeling, Development and Poverty Economics, Social determinants of health including energy and health nexus.
Olufunke has consulted for a number of local and international organizations including the African Economic Research Consortium, UNIDO, the World Bank, and the UNU-WIDER Finland. She was a Visiting Scholar to the World Bank in 2004.

Francois Le Scornet has nearly 15 years of international experience in the low-carbon power generation sector (hydropower, fuel cells, solar, nuclear power in particular). Specialized in market analysis, business development and product management, François has a deep understanding of the policies, strategies and technologies that define the activities of private actors working in the low-carbon energy sector. During his career, françois worked on numerous projects for emerging markets, in Africa and South East Asia in particular. François holds a Master in Chemistry from ECPM (France) and a Specialized Master in International business from HEC Paris.


In 2017, Francois created Carbonexit Consulting. Based in France, he supports companies, public bodies and associations to better prepare and benefit from the ecological transition. Carbonexit Consulting provides accredited greenhouse gas emissions audits for regulatory reportings as well as strategic studies and product marketing analysis to support low-carbon energy technology applications (Emerging technologies, solar, nuclear, hydropower, hydrogen, storage etc.).


Prior to this, Francois served at GE Renewable between 2013 to 2016 in corporate Marketing/strategy as well as product management for the hydropower and solar industry. Previously, Francois has served at AREVA (2004-2013) and the US Department of Energy (2001-2002) and CEPN (2003). During this period, François mostly worked on business development and marketing for products and services targeting the existing nuclear plants (maintenance and modernization, safety and performance improvements, radiation detection, uranium mining) as well as the development of fuel cells for portable power applications.


On it free time, supported an electrification project with Electricians Without Borders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Dr Xavier Lemaire is a senior research associate at the University College London – Institute for Sustainable Resources / Energy Institute (2011-today). Previously he was a research fellow at the Centre for Management under Regulation – Warwick Business School (2005-2011) and a European Union Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations – University of Warwick (2003-2004).

Dr Xavier Lemaire is a sociologist and a socio-economist who has been working as a practitioner and a researcher on energy and environmental issues in the Global South for the last 20 years. He has lead international research projects on energy access and energy transition in developing countries (2013-today); he coordinated an international network of energy regulators promoting clean energy (2005-2013); he worked as an independent consultant on territorial development and as a programme manager on rural electrification (1992-1997). He was a lecturer and a visiting lecturer in management, socio-economics and sociology in French Universities (1998-2002).

He holds a MSc in Management (Paris – Sorbonne, 1988); a Master in Organisation Studies/Policy Analysis (Paris – Dauphine, 1989), a postgraduate degree in Development Studies (Paris – Sorbonne, 1990) and a PhD in sociology (Paris – Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2000).

Dr. Morgan Bazilian is a non-resident Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy. In his full-time capacity, he is Lead Energy Specialist at the World Bank. He has over two decades of experience in the energy sector – and is regarded as a leading expert in international policy. His work has ranged from fiscal policy, to systems analysis, to infrastructure investment, to market regulation and governance in all areas of energy policy from upstream oil and gas to power systems. He holds a Ph.D. in energy analysis and was a Fulbright Fellow.
He has published approximately 100 papers in learned journals, and his 2008 book: “Analytical Methods for Energy Diversity and Security” is a seminal work in the field. His work has appeared in Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Foreign Affairs. Dr. Bazilian is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Advisory Council on Energy, and served as an advisor to the International Energy’s World Energy Outlook, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s Global Energy Outlook. He holds (or has held) academic affiliations at The Royal Institute of Technology of Sweden, Columbia University, Cambridge University, and IIASA.



Dr. Bazilian was the European Union’s lead negotiator on technology issues at the UN’s climate change negotiations, and a member of the UNFCCC Expert Group on Technology. He was the first Chair of the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership Programme Board, and a founder of the UNEP Public Finance Alliance steering group. He was a contributing author to the IPCC and the Global Energy Assessment, and served as an advisor to a €200M cleantech venture capital fund and on the Global Advisory Council of the Sustainable Finance Programme at Oxford University.

Previously he was a Deputy Director at NREL. Prior to that, Morgan worked in the United Nations on energy access issues. In this role he was deeply engaged with the design and implementation of the Sustainable Energy for All initiative, and managed UN-Energy. Prior to this post, he worked in the Irish Government as Chef de Cabinet for the Energy Minister, and was the Deputy CEO of the Irish National Energy Agency.

Debora Ley is a Lead Author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C. She has a PhD in Environmental Change from the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment of the University of Oxford. Her dissertation topic analyzed if rural renewable energy projects can simultaneously meet the multiple goals of sustainable development, climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation and if so, under what conditions, focusing on Guatemala and Nicaragua. She has a MSc in Civil Engineering, with a focus on energy systems, from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a BSc in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Ley worked at Mexico’s National Energy Savings Commission in the Cogeneration and Renewable Energy departments before joining Sandia National Laboratories, where she was the Program Manager for the Central America and Mexico Clean Energy and Environment Program, jointly funded by the US DoE and US AID. She later worked at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and the InterAmerican Development Bank, focusing mainly on regional energy integration in Central America. Among the main outcomes of her time at UN were strategies for sustainable energy in the region, and of the inclusion of energy within the Millennium Development Goals. She has also worked as a consultant for the Latin America Energy Organization focusing on rural electrification in Nicaragua, for the World Bank evaluating its rural solar energy programs in Nicaragua and Honduras, and for Chemonics doing strategic planning for Low Emissions Development in Mexico. She is a volunteer with Engineers Without Borders, Johns Hopkins chapter and has published diverse articles on topics of rural renewable electrification, especially technical codes and standards, and diverse topics linking renewable energy, climate change and sustainable development.

Temilade Sesan is an international development consultant with expertise in the areas of energy, health, agriculture and gender. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Architecture from Obafemi Awolowo University (Nigeria), a Master’s degree in Architecture from the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom) and a doctorate degree in Sociology and Social Policy also from the University of Nottingham. Her doctoral work on improved cookstove development constituted a platform for exploring the potential that sustainable energy technologies – including biomass, biofuel and solar energy technologies – have to improve the well-being of the poor, and the barriers that have limited their uptake in Africa to date. Temilade’s research brings together a range of themes, including appropriate technology development, participatory development, women’s empowerment, and livelihoods improvement. Her work regularly brings her in contact with national- and state-level policy makers, civil society organisations, academia, and representatives of small- and medium-scale businesses in the fields of energy, health, and the environment.


Dr Sesan has disseminated her research findings to global audiences via numerous presentations made at conferences in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. She has also published articles investigating the links between energy poverty and development in the practitioners’ journal Boiling Point and the academic journals Energy Policy, World Development, Progress in Development Studies, Community Development Journal and Technology in Society. She currently works as an independent consultant in Nigeria, with a client list that includes Heinrich Boell Stiftung Nigeria, Marine Power Limited, the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, the University of Nottingham, the French Agency for Development and the World Bank. She also teaches a module on renewable energy policies and markets at the Centre for Petroleum, Energy Economics and Law, University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

Bettina Bergöö is a Fellow (Green Finance) at the Center for Market Innovation, National Resource Defense Council, Washington DC, United States. She splits her time between increasing investment in green infrastructure through green investment banks and expanding access to clean energy in affordable multifamily housing. She has an educational and work background in clean energy policy and finance in the United States and in emerging economies. Prior to joining NRDC, Bergöö worked for three years as a management consultant on energy and water initiatives for the U.S. Department of Defense, focusing on strategic planning and program evaluation. She then held positions at SELCO Foundation, Barefoot College, and Enventure Enterprises in India and East Africa, where she conducted policy and finance analysis on the off-grid energy sector and incubated clean energy social enterprises. She is based in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Giovanni Palmisano earned his MSc in Chemical Engineering and his PhD in Chemical and Materials Engineering from the University of Palermo, Italy. Before joining Khalifa University (Masdar Campus), Dr. Palmisano’s research activities were mainly developed in Italy and Spain and concern photo-catalytic processes for organic chemistry, hydrogen production, water and air remediation, and self-cleaning coatings, with a special attention to materials characterization, kinetics, modelling of photo-reactors and radiant fluxes. From 2009 to 2012, he was administrator, chief engineer and safety manager at Hedera Engineering Srl – an Italian company operating in design and construction of photovoltaic plants in Italy. From 2008 to 2013 he has held free-lance consulting activity for private companies and Italian municipalities. Dr. Palmisano has co-authored ca. 90 highly cited papers in peer-reviewed international journals, and he has to his record seven patents, six books and six invited book chapters. He is regularly invited to offer lectures and serve as chair-person at international conferences and workshops. He is member of the editorial board of three international journals and he has guest-edited three special issues of international journals. He has been main advisor of 4 PhD students and advisor or coadvisor of 6 MSc students, one of whom won the best thesis award in Chemical Engineering and the outstanding thesis award in Masdar Institute.

Engr. Abdelkader Allali is a Nobel Peace Prize co-winner and a former IPCC WG II Vice Chair AR4. He is a Principal Chief Engineer, Agronomist and Geographer Specialist, acting as the International Expert in Green Economy, Environment and Climate Change Adaptation /Mitigation. He has more than 20 years’ experience in Development Cooperation in the fields, designing and/or implementing development project of agriculture, rural development, water resources, local government institutional development, civil society organisations, leading monitoring and evaluation of EU development cooperation programmes Europe-Africa, leading EU funding interventions for the operalisation of Mali Climate Fund and Green Economy Strategy and Implementation Plan. In addition, he has experience in several countries across Africa such as Algeria, Tunisia, Niger, South Africa, Ethiopia among others.

Abdelkader is well versed in designing, implementing and assessing climate change and mitigation actions as well as in development of climate change adaptation and mitigation projects. He contributes and teaches a number of courses related to climate change and agricultural/impact assessment and evaluation. In 2001 he was a contributing lead author with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Switzerland, drafting the report on Good Practice Guidance and Uncertainty Management in National greenhouse Gas Inventories related to Land-Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry.

He is a member of a number of professional bodies in Morocco focused on the environment and climate change and has contributed to numerous global projects including the UNFCCC Joint Implementation Evaluation Team for accreditation (2007-2008), the National Scientific and Technical Committee on Climate Change (Morocco) (2001-2002), the IPCC Bureau (Vice chair of the WGII: Monitoring and evaluation of Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change) (2002-2008), the Moroccan CDM Assessment Team on monitoring and evaluation projects (2006-2007-2008). In addition, he founded the National Association on Climatology (ANACLIM) in Morocco and served as the General Secretary (1993-1996).

Idowu (Jola) Ajibade is an Assistant Professor in Geography at Portland State University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar with a keen interest in human-environment relations. Her current research focuses on transformation and climate change adaptation in Sustainable Cities, Waterfront-Future Cities, and Informal Settlements. She is particularly interested in the connections between sustainability transitions, environmental justice, resilience planning and transformative adaptation. Jola explore concepts of resilience, transition, and transformation as pathways towards sustainability on multiple scales. Dr. Ajibade has over 10 years of professional experience working in both academic and professional sectors. She has worked with the Balsillie School of International Affairs (Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Waterloo), Western University, Leonard Cheshire International, (Sierra Leone and Nigeria), International Council on Human Rights Policy (Geneva, Switzerland); Freedom House Human Rights Reporting Project (Nigeria), and Institute for Media and Society (Nigeria). Jola holds a Ph.D. in Geography and Environmental Sustainability from Western University, Canada; an M.A. in International Law and Human Rights from the University for Peace, Costa Rica; and a B.A. in Philosophy from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. She was a Jeanne Sauvé Fellow at McGill University; a UNU-EHS fellow at United Nations University, Germany; a UNU Fellow at the United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan; and a fellow at University of Brown International Advanced Research Institute, Rhode Island, USA. She is currently a Research Fellow with the Earth System Governance, Sweden; an affiliate member at the McGill Sustainability Systems Initiative, Canada; and a Young Scientist Fellow in Integrated Research on Disaster Risk Programme (IRDR), China. Through her research, teaching and community engagement, she contributes to scholarship in areas of political ecology, climate change adaptation, environmental justice, transformation studies, urban planning and future cities, sustainable development, and feminist and disaster studies.

Dr. Greg Bodeker earned his PhD in Physics in 1994 at the University of Natal, South Africa. He then joined the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in New Zealand where he worked primarily on ozone depletion and climate change. In 2009 he left NIWA to establish Bodeker Scientific Ltd, a research company conducting research into the chemistry and climate of Earth’s atmosphere. Since 2009 he has also been an adjunct professor at the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute, in the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, at Victoria University of Wellington. Following his interest in innovation, in 2015 Dr. Bodeker established Kentron Ltd, a company specialising in the development and commercialisation of software and technology-based ideas. Dr. Bodeker has acted as a co-author, lead-author, and coordinating lead-author on several WMO/UNEP ozone assessments and also as a lead author on an IPCC/TEAP report on ozone-climate interactions. He was a member of the International Commission on the Middle Atmosphere from 2003 to 2011, the International Ozone Commission from 2004 to 2012, co-chair of SPARC (Stratosphere-troposphere Processes And their Role in Climate; a core project of the World Climate Research Programme) from 2012 to 2014, and co-chair of the GCOS Reference Upper-Air Network (GRUAN) from 2011 to 2017. He has authored or co-authored 133 papers in the international peer reviewed literature and has co-supervised 11 PhD students. His current research interests include measurements of upper-air essential climate variables, detection and attribution of climate change, and stratospheric dynamics.

Pu Wang is currently an associate professor at Institutes of Sciences and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research fields include climate and energy policies and sustainable development strategies. More specifically, his current research projects involve China’s carbon emissions trading program and co-benefits between greenhouse gas mitigation and environmental pollution reduction. Pu Wang received his Ph.D. degree from Cornell University in 2014, in the field of natural resources. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Belfer Center of Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University in 2015-2017, where he conducted research on cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse-gas emissions in China and China-U.S. cooperation in climate-change policies.

Steffen Kallbekken is a Research Director at CICERO Center for International Climate Research where he has worked since 2002. He was initially hired to program the first computable general equilibrium model at CICERO, and started a PhD on the effectiveness and acceptability of environmental taxes two years later. After completing his PhD in Economics in 2008 he has managed research projects on environmental taxes, transport policy, behavioural interventions (“nudges”), and energy efficiency. He was Research Director of the Climate Policy unit in 2012 and 2013, and the Climate Economics Unit from 2014 to 2017. Since 2014 he has been Director of the FME-center CICEP Center for International Climate and Energy Policy, and much of his outreach and research has focused on the Paris Agreement.

Dr. Kallbekken is currently chair of the Norwegian commission on estimating emissions from agriculture, and a member of the Norwegian commission for estimating emission effects of climate measures.

Dr. Kallbekken’s current research interests follow two main lines: The design of international climate agreements, with a particular focus on the role of short-lived climate pollutants, and the effectiveness and acceptability of climate policy instruments. Most of his research is based on use surveys, lab and field experiments.

Paula Holland is a development practitioner with 27 years’ experience conducting economic analysis for sustainable development. She specialises in the economic dimensions of risk management (climate change adaptation and disaster risk). Her background includes economic analysis of natural resource management in Australia (national government), the United Kingdom (academia) and the Pacific. She has extensive experience working with intergovernmental agencies to serve the sustainable development needs of Pacific small island developing states. Paula is presently an environmental economist with New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. Paula interprets the findings of physical science from a socioeconomic perspective. She provides a science-policy interface so that policy makers can make informed decisions based on scientific evidence. Her experience includes the cost benefit analysis of risk management options, economic valuation of resource use and the costing of national policies, such as national disaster risk management action plans. She also has considerable experience in building the capacity of junior economists and Pacific island staff in how to conduct natural resource economics analysis. Paula’s background covers sectors such as fisheries, waste management, natural hazards, climate change adaptation and conservation. She has contributed to policy change in several cases, including relocating facilities in Fiji and Tonga to adapt to storm threats and policy development in Kiribati to address the mining of aggregates in the face of climate change. Paula has a Master of Science in Rural Resources and Environmental Policy (Imperial College) and an Honours degree in Economics and Geography specialising in resource economics.

Dr. Taoyuan Wei is currently Senior Researcher at CICERO Center for International Climate Research. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oslo, Norway in 2009, and he is interested in economic analysis on issues related to energy, environment and climate change. He has worked on national accounting at National Bureau of Statistics of China, studied on environmental and development economics at the University of Oslo. Dr. Wei has focused on economic modeling and analysis in several interdisciplinary research projects related to climate change issues at CICERO since 2009. He has also researched on rebound effects of energy efficiency improvement, one of the key measures commonly suggested for climate change mitigation. More about him is available at http://folk.uio.no/taoyuaw/

Dr. Zhu Liu is the Young Talent associate professor at Tsinghua University and lecture on Climate Change and Sustainability at Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia. He is also the Giorgio Ruffolo Research Fellow and Associate at Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University. Dr. Liu hold Ph.D. from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2013) with joint training by University of Cambridge (2012). He has conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University and California Institute of Technology (collaborate with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Dr. Liu is the editor of Applied Energy, a peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on energy engineering with impact factors of 7.9, Dr. Liu have authored about 40 academic publications in Nature, Nature Climate Change, PNAS and other professional journals. Dr. Liu’s research has also been covered by 300+ international media outlets including by Nature, Science, New York Times, BBC, and CNN, and has been cited by policy stakeholders as scientific basis for environmental policies. Dr. Liu is the global highly citied researcher (ranking in the top 1% by citations).

Ana Pueyo is a consultant and Scholar in energy and development policy and economics. Currently, she is working on a technical assistance for ECREEE (the ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency), based in Cape Verde. In ECREEE she works mainly on two Programmes: Regional Electricity Markets Integration, and Gender mainstreaming in energy interventions. In her academic role as a Senior Research Fellow at IDS, she leads large multidisciplinary, international research projects on energy policy for sustainable development. She is also involved in teaching, convening the Master’s course module “Competing in the Green Economy”.

Her geographic focus in the last 6 years has been Sub-Saharan Africa, but previously she worked extensively in Latin America and Europe. She is a trained Economist, and she holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering as well as an MSc in Management of Information Systems by the London School of Economics.

Claire Walsh is a Lecturer in the Water Group in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University, UK. With over 18 years of experience her research focuses on long term change (including climate change) in both natural environments and engineered systems, in particular looking at impacts for drought, urban flooding, sustainable infrastructure and ecosystem services and how to determine holistic, cross-disciplinary solutions to such problems. Much of her work involves working closely with end-users to co-define research challenges and co-design research to ensure maximum uptake, dissemination and impact.

She currently co-leads the UK’s National Green Infrastructure Facility located at Newcastle University and is actively conducting research in Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Malaysia and Uganda. Claire also leads Newcastle University’s Global Challenge Network on Water Security.

Ms Rianne C. ten Veen LLM MA MSc PGDip PGCert is a humanitarian aidworker with research and environment specialisms. After a decade at an INGO, and several years at a consultancy, she has been a PhD researcher on globalisation and surveillance, now an independent disaster management consultant and focus on faith-inspired sustainable development. She focuses on disaster-related/ environment/ development projects. She was a Board Member at Groundwork W-Midlands and former Trustee at TreeAid. Finances permitting, she would love to spend more time on a PhD on Islam & Environment: comparing the humanitarian aid principle of ‘do no harm’ with the Islamic principle of ‘la darar’ (do no harm) with regards to sustainable development.
She is a member of the management team of Islamic Foundation for Ecology & Environment Sciences (IFEES), and co-founded ‘Faith and Climate Change’ (a Birmingham Friends of the Earth project; this project was a finalist in NESTA’s Big Green Challenge and won The Guardian’s Community Hero award and was the Environment lead on the Committee of the Birmingham Council of Faiths. In 2009, she self-published a ‘save cash& planet’ style book from Islamic perspective: ‘199 ways to please God, how to (re-)align your daily life with your duty of care to Creation’ (ISBN: 978-1844266296) and set up Green Creation.

Dr. Frederiksen is a senior scientist at Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University. She is a master in geography and earned her PhD in 1993 from Roskilde University, with studies based on remote sensing of land degradation in semi-arid East Africa. Since then, she has developed a broader interest in social-ecological interdisciplinary challenges, sustainability and lately, climate change, in applied and interdisciplinary contexts.
While at Roskilde University, she continued working with farming and land degradation in semi-arid East Africa. She participated in a 5 years interdisciplinary Centre for Research on Sustainable Agriculture in Semi-Arid Africa (SASA) with agronomists, economists, development researchers and antropologists, focusing on resource management and land degradation.
After a 3 years’ leave as a spouse in Indonesia, she moved to the Danish National Environmental Research Institute (NERI), which was in 2007 merged into Aarhus University. Since then, she has mainly worked with European and Danish environmental challenges. She has studied farming and farmer strategies in organic farming, and how they contributed to nature quality, and she worked with governance and planning for water quality in coastal and marine environments. Later she studied bioenergy potentials, and location of biomass based utilities. Her research interests are now turning towards climate change mitigation and adaptation.
She has served as Head of Section Emission modeling and environmental geography (2006-2018), and has been a member of the Danish Climate Council (2015-2019).

Hannah is a lecturer in International Relations at Cardiff University. Her research interests stem from a concern for the environment and climate change. She has examined these issues from diverse perspectives, including the securitisation framework and the sociological approach of Pierre Bourdieu. The questions that she has sought to address through these approaches aim to identify the forms of knowledge and power defining environmental problems and how these shape social and political response. To date, her research has largely focused on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). At present, she is researching the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) with Dr Alice Vadrot. The aim of their research is to develop new methodological and conceptual apparatus for understanding the role and authority of knowledge in global environmental politics.

She co-convenes the Environmental Justice Research Unit in the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University with Professor Ben Pontin. The aim of this multidisiciplinary group is to support members’ research and to challenge our understanding of the social, political and legal conditions of environmental degradation. More information is available at https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/environmental-justice-research-unit

Dr. Neil Craik is an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo with appointments to the Balsillie School of International Affairs and the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development, where he teaches and researches in the fields of international and Canadian environmental law. His current research examines the legal structure of global commons regimes. Professor Craik has particular interests in climate and geoengineering law and governance, deep seabed mining regulation and environmental impact assessment. He is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Co-director of the BSIA/CIGI International Law Summer Institute and from 2011 to 2017, Professor Craik served as the Director of the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development at the University of Waterloo.

He is the author of several books, including Global Environmental Change and Innovation in International Law, (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Climate Change Policy in North America: Designing Integration(UTP, 2013), Public Law: Cases, Materials and Commentary (Emond Montgomery, 2011) and The International Law of Environmental Impact Assessment: Process Substance and Integration (CUP, 2008), in addition to numerous book chapters and journal articles.

Kristina Alnes is a Senior Advisor in Climate Finance at CICERO, an interdisciplinary climate research institute. She leads CICERO’s research on developing a climate risk rating of companies. Kristina also conducts environmental ratings and assessments of green bonds and sukuks, and sustainability bond frameworks. CICERO is the leading global provider of external reviews on green bonds, having provided approximately 100 Second Opinions. Her other research includes physical climate risk, blockchain applications to impact reporting, analysis and disclosure of climate risk for corporations. Kristina also conducts capacity building on climate finance in emerging markets.

Prior to CICERO, Kristina worked in management consulting, environmental project management and academic research. She has advised financial institutions and Fortune 500 companies in the US, Europe and the Middle East on environmental and social data analysis, stakeholder engagement and ESG strategy. Among her clients were Walmart, the IMF and the King Khalid Foundation of Saudi Arabia.

Kristina has a Master of Science in Sustainability Management from Columbia University, USA, and a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University, Canada.

Dr Gerald A. Corzo has extensive experience in modelling for various problems in Integrated water resources management, his high skills in ICT technology have been used to develop a different type of scientific application. As researcher and lecturer of various academic institutions have worked and coordinated academic programs. His expertise has been mainly developed around programming mathematical models and statistical models for hydroinformatics problems. Since the last six years, he has been working on the use of global hydrological models ensemble and their uncertainty for climate change analysis. This work mainly involves heavy data loads from GCM and GHM models for several scenarios and developed statistical tools for online and parallel processing of such information. This work was presented in the WATCH-EU project report No. 43. As manager of the Hydroinformatics servers during four years, he developed and implemented database web systems for different projects at UNESCO-IHE, as well as maintained and managed the institutional basic support collaborative working environment (BSCW). In 2012 he won the Tison award in Hydrology from the IAHS association. Recently he supervised the research projects with the ministry of Nigeria to develop a Spatial Data Infrastructure for sharing and analyzing different regions in the country. Aside from this right now he is coordinating the activities of the development of data analysis over large data set in the Systema Integrado de Recursos Hidricos from Colombia. This work and others are being developed under the framework and cooperation with the group CUAHSI and GEOSS, following all OGC standards. He has coordinated the statistics of the Climate change inventory of adaptation and mitigation actions for Latin-America, presented at the WWF in 2012. He is a Civil engineer by training with a strong background on computational science and specialized in Teleinformatics. His areas of research cover innovative methods for integrating intelligent computational algorithms and hydrological conceptual models for hydrological forecasting (Flood Early Warning System models integration, Delft-FEWS). He developed scripts for areas of computational intelligence, optimization of water resources, online modelling and in fluid dynamics simulation. One of his recent projects focuses on exploring the use of mobile phone antennas in Colombia for measuring precipitation. He has participated on research projects in different countries like China with the North China University for Water Conservancy and Electric Power in China, Colombia (CINARA), Mexico (Technologico of Monterrey), England (CEH), Norway (University of Oslo) and others. Last five years he served as chair of the session on geo-statistics at the European Geoscience Union. He led the LatinAqua network for water research scientist in Latin-America in 2011

Dr. Warren Mabee (Ph.D. 2001, Toronto) is Professor and Head of the Department of Geography and Planning at Queen’s University. He holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Renewable Energy Development and Implementation, and is cross appointed to the School of Policy Studies and the School of Environmental Studies at Queen’s. His international research programme focuses on the interface between policy and technology in the area of renewable energy and fuels, addressing issues that bridge the gap between researchers and decision-makers using tools such as life cycle assessment, geographic information systems and agent-based logistical models. His past work experiences include stints at the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto, as well as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He is interested in mentoring students focused on issues around renewable energy, energy and environmental policy, and forestry.

Dr. Basim Belgasim is currently a Director of solar thermal systems at the Centre for Solar Energy Research and Studies (CSERS). He earned his PhD in 2013 from Northumbria University, UK in the area of renewable energy engineering. His research interest includes concentrating solar power (CSP), direct and indirect solar water desalination systems and solar water heating and cooling technologies. Dr. Belgasim is a lecturer at Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Benghazi and visiting lecturer at Libyan Academy of Higher Education.
Also, Dr. Belgasim is an active member at different professional bodies. He is an Editor at Journal of Solar Energy and Sustainable Development, Member of World Society of Sustainable Energy Technologies (WSSET), UK, Member of Scientific Advisory Board at Centre for Solar Energy Research and Studies (CSERS), Recognized Reviewer at Applied Thermal Engineering and Applied Energy (Elsevier) journals.

Misato Sato is an environmental economist with particular interest in climate change and energy. She has published widely on these topics, and also works with governments, businesses and NGOs on topics of shared interest, such as carbon pricing, trade and green growth. Misato is based at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where she is Deputy Director of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, and Assistant Professorial Research Fellow in the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, where she leads the Policy Design & Evaluation Programme. Her recent research explores the regulatory and institutional constraints to enabling low carbon transitions of energy intensive industries. She has extensively researched the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), evaluating its effectiveness and efficiency. She is also interested in the growth of the green economy, including the drivers and barriers to international trade in environmental goods and services (EG&Ss) as well as links between low-carbon innovation and firms’ economic and market performance.

Misato has conducted policy work for the governments of the UK, Sweden, Netherlands and Japan as well as international organisations such as the World Bank, United Nations Environment Programme and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. She holds a PhD in Environmental Economics from the LSE, an MSc in Environmental and Resource Economics from University College London, and an MA Joint Honours in Economics and Chinese from the University of Edinburgh.

With a background in technology and financing, having developed and sold 2 software companies and 2 banking services firms, Mr. De Rosa started Lamplighter Energy in 2002 to re-power existing wind farms in the western United States. Since then, Lamplighter and it’s affiliates have grown to deliver over 2,100 MW of wind, solar, hydro and waste to energy facilities in North America, E. & W. Europe and the ASEAN/China markets as well as new initiatives in Biomass, Hydrogen, Energy Storage and Water Treatment Systems. He led new greenfield development initiatives for Lamplighter and partner companies as well as managed the turn around for a publicly traded company and acquisitions of both assets and competitive development companies.

Mr. De Rosa studied Theology and Management at Moody Bible Institute, Corporate Finance from AIU and in addition to starting and selling 5 successful companies has helped start 7 international non-profits serving the disadvantaged.

Anna Asikainen is a climate change and green finance expert with over 10 years of international experience working in academia, financial services and management consulting in Europe, the Middle East and Americas. In her current role at South Pole, Anna manages the UN Environment-led Financial Centres for Sustainability (FC4S) initiative which aims to catalyze green finance innovation at a pan-European level, aligning these efforts with the EU Commission Action Plan for Financing Sustainable Growth. In addition, Anna supervises projects related to mobilizing climate finance, creating an industry standard for reporting climate risks and designing national and regional carbon pricing schemes. Her previous experience includes leading the commercial activities at MÉXICO2 – Mexican Carbon Platform at the Mexican Stock Exchange, lecturing and conducting research at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and managing multidisciplinary academic projects in the Middle East. Anna has delivered mandates on climate change and green finance to the World Bank, Inter American Development Bank, United Nations, Environmental Defense Fund, International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources in Mexico (SEMARNAT) and to a wide range of national governments and private sector companies. She holds a M.Sc. in Economics from Aalto University School of Business and a B.Sc. in International Business from Helsinki School of Economics. In addition, she has completed studies on social and environmental impact assessment, carbon offset project development and financial markets.

Kacper Szulecki is a researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo. His research focuses on energy and climate policy, in Europe and beyond, as well as energy security and the concept of “energy democracy”. He edited the book “Energy Security in Europe” (Palgrave, 2018), as well as two special issues on EU energy and climate governance (in “Climate Policy” and “Politics & Governance”). He holds an M.Sc. in Political Science (specializing in transnational environmental governance) from VU University Amsterdam and a PhD from the University of Konstanz. He is a member of the Climate Strategies network, and sits on the editorial board of the journals “Energy Research and Social Science” and “Politics & Governance”.He was a visiting fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, EUI Florence and the Florence School of Regulation (2017) and a guest researcher at the Department of Climate Policy, German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin, 2013). He was also a Dahrendorf Fellow at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin (2013-2014).

Magda Moner-Girona has a PhD in Physics (Material Science). With over 15 years of experience, Dr. Moner-Girona’s research has focused on techno-economic studies to analyze policies enhancing the deployment of renewable energy in Sub-Saharan Africa and the energy-related sustainable development goals. This includes experience at the United Nation Environment Programme, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, and the University of California at Berkeley.
In the last years, she is focusing on integrating social dimensions in the techno-economic studies by building up several indicators.
In the JRC‘s Institute for Energy, under the framework of the European Photovoltaic Platform, she worked with the design of policy support schemes for the deployment of renewable energies in off-grid regions (Feed-in tariff for mini-grids). She focus on least-cost models combined with geospatial analysis to build-up interactive tools for rural electrification planning.
At the United Nation Environment Programme‘s, she coordinated several activities to help governments gain a better understanding of the policy and technology requirements associated with renewable energy deployment in China, South Africa and Brazil and solar and wind resource assessments.

Dr. Rajnish Ranjan is Vice President, Government Business & Disaster Management at Skymet Weather Services Pvt. Ltd. He is a motivational teacher, research mentor, trainer and policy adviser having strong hold on emerging market potential in the subject.
He is having over 20 years of inter-disciplinary experience in Disaster Risk Management, Geosciences and Hydrogeology. He has worked in senior positions in organizations like National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM), International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Administrative Training Institutes etc.
He is an alumnus of Science College, Patna University, where he attained masters and PhD with NET (CSIR). He is specialized in multi-level capacity building interventions including e-learning. His expertise also includes flood risk management, DRR and sustainable development, research and knowledge management. Taught and lectured in leading universities and more than 50 institutions across the country, written several research papers and academic articles in multiple disciplines.
He also contributed in the formulation of National Disaster Management Plan, Guidelines on Boat and Navigational safety and review of several State Disaster Management Plans including Departmental DM Plans. Throughout his career, Rajnish has been deeply involved in research, knowledge management and evaluation of teaching and learning methodology. Contributed as Member Secretary in 3 apex level Expert Groups in India constituted by NDMA- Expert Group on flooding and Siltation in Bihar, Expert group on the preparation of Flood Hazard Atlas, Expert group on the preparation of National Guidelines on Boat and Navigational Safety.
He is interested in mentoring students working on the following areas: hazard,vulnerability and risk assessment, disaster management planning, supply chain management during and after disaster, mainstreaming in developmental planning, hydro-geological investigation with special reference to groundwater quality, geohazards and risk mitigation especially landslides and virtual learning environment.

Elin Lerum Boasson is an associate professor at the Political Science Department, the University of Oslo, and a senior researcher at CICERO Center for International Climate Research. She has published extensively on national climate and energy policies; exploring the role of policy entrepreneurship, business influence, political steering, diffusion and the role of the EU. She applies sociological institutional theories as well as historical institutionalism and public policy theories. Boasson gives political science master courses on climate policy, public policy theory and EU studies. Methodologically, Boasson is specialized in comparative, qualitative case studies and process tracing. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and the Freie University, Berlin, and is now on sabbatical at the SCANCOR-Weatherhead, Harvard University. During this research stay, Boasson works on a sting of publications relating to two research projects on comparative climate policy; the ‘Revising the National Renewables Policy Mix: The role of state aid and other key EU policies (REMIX)’ and ‘Understanding the international Context for Norway’s low-emission Economy Transition (CONNECT).

Boasson took part of the leadership group of the COST Action Innovations in Climate Governance: Sources, Patterns and Effects. She is a Lead Author in the upcoming Sixth Assessment report cycle of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, working group III Mitigation.

David Moser graduated in physics and coordinates the activities of the Research Group Photovoltaic Energy Systems of the Institute for Renewable Energy, EURAC, Bolzano, Italy. His work focuses on characterising indoor and outdoor behaviour, performance, reliability and quality of PV modules and systems, and their integration in grids and in the built environment. He is also active in PV potential studies on a regional and national scale and on the role of PV in the energy transition. He is member of the board of directors of “The Association of European Renewable Energy Research Centres” EUREC and of the Steering Committee of the European PV Technology and Innovation Platform PV ETIP.

Dr. Roberta Boscolo is Science Officer of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) leading the climate and energy nexus area of research and applications. In particular she is supporting the development of renewable energy in low-income countries and emerging markets. Renewable energy brings multiple opportunities for low-emissions and climate-resilient development but is also highly sensitive to climate, weather and water. Her work focuses on enhancing the national capacity to develop and deliver operational climate information to strategic socio-economic sectors for adaptation and mitigation roadmaps.

Prior to this position, she was programme officer at the World Climate Research Programme secretariat, coordinating scientific efforts worldwide to address the knowledge gaps in understanding Earth climate system. Within WCRP she lead efforts for advancing in the application of climate change research to develop climate adaptation strategies.

She has a Master’s degree in Physical Oceanography from the University of North Wales, UK, and a Bachelor of Physics from the University of Padua in Italy.

Corrado is a Reader in Economics with broad research interests that span the economics of growth and development, environmental and natural resource economics, energy economics and the economics of technological change. The key feature of his work is an emphasis on both theoretical and empirical aspects, as well as its policy relevance.

Corrado’s most recent research covers several aspects of the interaction between environmental policy and natural resource use, the taxation of exhaustible resources, emissions trading schemes and their efficiency-promoting features, the role of skills in the process of economic growth, and environmental policy in the presence of directed technological change.

Corrado is interested in supervising students on (almost any) topics in environmental and natural resource economics and policy. He has research experience on environmental policy in dynamic models, the evaluation of market-based policy instruments, the interaction of environmental policy and natural resource use, the economics of energy generation, endogenous technological change and technology diffusion, as well as in the link between skills availability, brain drain and economics growth. He is particularly keen to discuss projects that entail both theoretical and empirical aspects.

Joshua B. Horton is Research Director, Geoengineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and also manages the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Initiative on Climate Engineering. His research encompasses the politics, policy, and governance of solar geoengineering, with a current focus on compensation for harms arising from possible future deployment of the technology. From 2013 to 2016, Dr. Horton was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Belfer Center’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program. He obtained a PhD in political science from Johns Hopkins University in 2007, where he specialized in international relations.

Rusyan Jill Mamiit holds a Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Environmental Management from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is a sustainable development professional with training and broad experience in conducting socioeconomic, statistical, policy, and data analyses as well as capacity building and training activities related to climate change adaptation, ecosystem services, food security, agricultural entrepreneurship, renewable energy, and water resources management among others. Over the last 15 years, she has planned, organized, coordinated, and managed projects and capacity development activities at various scales in more than ten countries in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, North America, and the Pacific. Her ability to lead change in complex environments, to work in multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary settings, as well as her communication and teamwork skills characterize much of her work.



Currently, she is the external technical lead of the United Arab Emirates’ National Climate Change Adaptation Program. In this capacity, she developed the UAE’s national climate change risk assessment framework considering the local socioeconomic, political, and technical contexts. She assessed the climate risks for the UAE’s health, energy, infrastructure, and environment sectors using the framework that is expert-guided, evidence-based, and participatory. With her technical and analytical skills, she helped the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment develop and publish a series of flagship reports on climate change adaptation not only in the UAE but in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.



Prior to her current post, she also served as an Environmental Affairs Officer at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). At the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Centre for Biodiversity, she focused on the areas of climate change, ecosystem services, and risk assessment in her role as a Research and Policy Specialist. At the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), she had the opportunity to investigate both natural and human-induced disasters such as the tsunami and the regional haze pollution.



In almost two decades of hands-on experience in delivering strategic research, analysis, and capacity building initiatives in the areas of biodiversity, climate change, and related socioeconomic issues, among others, she has built a strong connection to networks of researchers, policymakers, professionals, and civil society organizations in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, West Asia, North America, and even Europe and Africa. She plans to continue her work on climate change and include cutting-edge issues related to socially-inclusive economic growth, ecological resilience, disaster risk reduction, and food security. Her other continuing interests include the greening of policies at various scales of governance and findings ways to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs).



In parallel to her professional activities, she continues to enhance her skills in the area of climate change adaptation. She recently completed her Certificate in Climate Adaptation Finance from the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. As a member of various professional organizations, she continues her outreach work by giving pro bono lectures on climate change and sustainable development to local universities.

Dr. Falendra Kumar Sudan is Professor, Department of Economics, University of Jammu, India with specialization in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, Climate Change Economics, Energy and Development, and Sustainable Development. Prof. Sudan is Director, Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development (RCE Jammu) acknowledged by United Nations University, Tokyo and Member of different Environment Expert Committees, Government of India. He was Head, Department of Economics, University of Jammu, and Adjunct Research Fellow, University of South Australia, Adelaide.


He has been awarded two dozen research projects funded by the World Bank, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Environment and Forests, etc. He has published fifty peer reviewed research papers and contributed twenty five chapters in edited volumes published by Springer, Asian Development Bank Institute, World Scientific, IGI Global, etc. and published six books and edited nine research volumes. He is Editor-in-Chief, SOCIAL SCI, and served as Editor, International Journal of Environment and Development. Dr. Sudan is Member, Editorial Board, Applied Economics and Policy Analysis, and Journal of Social and Economic Policy and Member Review Board of Journal IJABIM USA and IJeC USA, Member Advisory Board of Journals Management Edge, and Economic World.


He has supervised more than seventy Masters dissertations, nine Masters of Philosophy dissertations, and seven Ph. D theses and currently two Masters of Philosophy dissertations and seven Ph. D dissertations are being supervised. He has participated in fifty international and national conferences each and organized numerous training and consultation workshops and breakout sessions.

Ademola Oluborode JEGEDE is a professor of law at the University of Venda (UNIVEN). He holds an LLB (Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria), an LLM in Human Rights & Democratisation in Africa (University of Pretoria), and obtained an LLD Human Rights, with distinction, from the same University. During the LLM programme, Ademola was the winner of the Keba Mbaye prize for the best dissertation and while at UNIVEN, he has won several research honours.



His research focal area is on the interface of climate change and carbon dioxide removal options with human rights law of vulnerable groups in Africa. His extensive publications on this theme include the book The Climate Change Regulatory Framework and Indigenous Peoples’ Lands in Africa: Human Rights Implications (Pretoria University Law Press, 2016) and a range of articles and chapters in book published by reputable national and international publishing houses. Ademola is on the editorial and reviewers lists of journals including the African Human Rights Year Book, African Human Rights Law Journal, International Migration, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, Third World Quarterly, Australian Journal of Human Rights. He has been a research visitor to the Centre for International Environmental Law, USA, and Human Rights Institute at Abo Akademi, Finland. He is a fellow of Salzburg Seminar, Austria and a visiting lecturer to the LLM Human Rights programme of the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law and since 2014, he has been listed on the distinguished roster of Counsel under the Legal Aid Scheme of the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights, African Union.

Helene Amundsen is a Senior Researcher at CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Oslo. Her current research areas are municipal challenges to climate change, particularly transformation to low-emission society, and climate change adaptation. She is the principal investigator on a project investigating how Norwegian municipalities can contribute to transformation to a low-emission society. She has previously worked in coastal and natural resource-based communities and is currently completing a study on the primary industries and the green transformation.

María Yetano Roche is a energy policy researcher and consultant based in Abuja. She collaborates with Wuppertal Institute’s WISIONS, a programme funding sustainable energy projects in developing regions and south-to-south knowledge networks. As an independent consultant, she Among other things, I have supported the Heinrich Böll Foundation in stakeholder-validated analysis of Nigerian future electricity mix scenarios, and the Federal Ministry of Environment in the drafting of sectoral action plans for the implementation of Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) – with a focus on Industrial Energy Efficiency. In past roles she was the scientific assistant to the Coordinating Lead Authors of the chapter on Industry for the IPCC 5th Assessment Report (AR5) and consulted for UNEP (Paris DTIE branch) and EU-Egypt’s Cooperation Agreement.

Joachim Bonkoungou is a consultant for African Development Bank (AfDB), Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. His expertise cover climate change and green growth mainstreaming in projects, country strategic paper and regional integrated strategic paper for West Africa. Projects are from agriculture, energy, transport and water supply and sanitation sectors. He supports West African country to have access to climate finance. AfDB has two own climate funds (Africa Climate Change Fund and Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa) and four external funds where AfDB is implementing entity (Green Climate Fund, Climate Investment Fund, Global Environment Facility and Adaptation Fund). He supports also West African Countries for their National Determined Contribution (NDC) implementation and the new NDC formulation to take into account new ambitions of greenhouse gas reduction.
Bonkoungou was a researcher on geography, climate and environment at Burkina Faso’s institute on agriculture and environment research (www.inera.bf). He is a fellowship from African Climate Leadership Program (https://africlp.or.ke) for conducting research in Tiogo Classified Forest in Burkina Faso. Students are investigating practices to empower local and marginalized stakeholders and make the forest more resilient to climate change. A protocol is being co-developed to have an inclusive management of the classified forest.
Bonkoungou hold a Master’s degree from regional AGRHYMET Centre and a geography doctorate on Burkina Faso’s climate change from University of Niamey (Niger). Research interests cover participatory action research on adaptation and attenuation to climate change in agriculture, environment and water sectors, innovative best practices co-development, empowerment of stakeholders to ensure local development.

Dr Shannon is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

His work focuses on the processes of global change and transformation that take place over and above the state. In particular, he has examined how peoples have sought to expand the circle of inclusion in cosmopolitan political community through processes of mutual recognition and dialogue across borders in world politics. His other research areas include global responses to climate change and ecological crises, accountability efforts in global governance, and the problems of assassination and tyrannicide. Also, he has investigated the continuing impact of dialogue and discourses in socialist thought, including fieldwork in Cuba in 2016 investigating current forms of socio-political change underway on the island. His current major project focuses on dialectics – a unique form of thinking through dialogue with others – and how different cultures and societies have utilized such knowledge across history. There, he has shown how dialectical thinking can help us mediate the accelerating ecological and political challenges facing humanity today.

Since completing his PhD in 2011, he has been a research fellow at the University of Helsinki, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Queensland, and research fellow at Griffith University. He has published widely in critical International Relations theory, edited four books and three journal symposia. He is a co-founder and co-editor of the journal Global Discourse and sit on the editorial board of Globalizations. Here is a link to his personal website.

Bahtiyor Eshchanov – Senior Lecturer in Economics at Westminster International University in Tashkent (WIUT). He joined WIUT in 2013 as a lecturer. His research interests include energy supply and demand modeling, techno-economic feasibility of energy technologies with special emphasis on renewable energy sources and regional environmental issues, namely water-energy nexus in Central Asia. In line with teaching, Bahtiyor Eshchanov works for private consulting companies and International Financial Institutes. Two of his ongoing research projects are (i) Pilot project on installing solar-PV powered deep-pump irrigation system for an orchard in a semi-arid mountainous farm in the Ferghana valley and (ii) Biogas from agricultural waste in the Aral Sea Basin. Bahtiyor Eshchanov holds a PhD degree in Applied Economics (Energy Economics) from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium as an Erasmus Mundus scholarship holder and MSc degree in Sustainable Technologies from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden as a Swedish Institute scholarship holder.

Swenja is Head of Adaptation Research at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, part of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), overseeing social science research projects on climate adaptation, Loss and Damage of climate change, and disaster risk finance with a geographic scope ranging from the UK to developing countries. Swenja’s research is investigating climate risk management and resilience strategies focusing on public policies, financial instruments and individual behaviour through a mix of inter-disciplinary approaches, integrating concepts from geography, climate science, economics and governance studies.

She has published widely on these topics and is a contributing author to the IPCC and the EU Science for Disaster Risk Management Report. She is co-founder of the ‘Loss and Damage Network’–bringing together academics and practitioners working on the UNFCCC’s L&D work program. She works closely with industry and policy makers and was appointed Visiting Academic at the Bank of England in 2015 to work on the regulator’s first report on climate change. Swenja was selected lead author for the business and industry chapter of the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment in 2017 and Lead Academic for a World Bank project on the benefits of Disaster Risk Management (DRM), working with the Overseas Development Institute to explore how the co-benefits of DRM measures can strengthen the economic case for investment. Swenja was the GRI-lead in the Costing Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation in Ireland project, in collaboration with University College Cork and funded by the Environmental Protection Agency in Ireland. From 2012 – 2016 she was Principal Investigator for the EU’s FP7-project ENHANCE, conducting an analysis of disaster risk management partnerships across Europe and an investigation of the UK’s new Flood Re insurance arrangement.

Prior to joining LSE in 2010 Swenja spent more than ten years in the insurance industry working on climate and risks management, including roles at Munich Re, Marsh Mc Lennon and the Association of British Insurers. Swenja was a Fulbright Scholar in the US, studying Ecological Economics and International Relations at the University of New Hampshire and received a PhD in Political Science from Hamburg University for her work on ‘Climate Change and the Insurance Industry’ in 2002.

Adam W. Stratton is a certified renewable energy specialist, impassioned with clean energy generation. He holds a Masters degree in Renewable Energy Management and has over 15 years of experience serving in various capacities related to renewable energy management. He co-founded Sladamco Energy Incorporation and Tecasol S.L, where he acts also as a board member. Both companies provide innovative energy and water technologies to Africa, Spain and Portugal, as well as water technologies to various countries around the world.
He currently holds the position of the Head of North America, Project Development and Offtake Origination, X-ELIO, United States.
Prior to his present position, he had previously served as the Senior Corporate Director, Algonquin Power and Utilities Corporation spearheading solar, wind and energy storage greenfield development.

Ayansina Ayanlade (Ph.D. King’s College London, University of London, UK) is a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Geography, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He has academic experience in Nigeria, USA, Norway, and the United Kingdom. Over the years, he has engaged and contributed to researches in the areas of land-atmospheric interactions and environmental changes using remote sensing and GIS. His current research interests include climate change studies, understanding of perceived climate change impacts, indigenous and local knowledge on climate change and the influence of both national and international climate change negotiations, and application of Remote Sensing and GIS to land-atmospheric interactions. Dr. Ayalade’s research interest in climate change include: inclusion of gender in Africa’s Climate Change Policies and Strategies; solution to atmospheric data gaps; application of geoinformatics in eco-climatic studies; geospatial data infrastructure for sharing agro-climatic information to improve agricultural productivity; land surface temperature and heat fluxes in cities and their rural surroundings; climate variability/change and attitude to adaptation technologies among selected rural farmers’ communities; rainfall variability and drought characteristics in some agro-climatic zones; remote sensing approaches for land use and land surface temperature assessment; climate change education and knowledge among university graduates; climate change policies and programmes; influences of wind speed and direction on atmospheric particle concentrations and industrially induced noise; the influence of atmospheric conditions on the outbreak of diseases; climate change monitoring and its impacts assessment with Geographic Information System; as well as climate and crop relationships.

He was a Scholar of Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF); The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA); Research Fellow of Climate Impact Research Capacity and Leadership Enhancement in Sub-Saharan Africa (CIRCLE), which is an initiative of the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom (UK) and a Visiting Research Fellow under the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) at International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Kenya. His International research training experience includes International Research Institute for Climate and Society, at The Earth Institute, Columbia University, Lamont Campus,USA; Research methods, impacts and adaptation policies, A course on research methods in climate change and health, University of Bergen, Norway; Academic research leadership training, King’s College London, University of London. He is currently a Project Associate under Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC) core projects of International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) https://ugec.org/people/project-associates/ . Dr. Ayanlade is also one of scientist working with UN-Intergovernmental Panel on climate Change (IPCC) (as a lead author of Chapter 9: Africa of the Working Group II of the forthcoming IPCC Sixth Assessment Report); and participant in the preparation of Nigeria’s Second National Communication under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Presently, he was selected as African representatives in the Past Global Changes International Project, Switzerland and Research Group on Climate Change Adaptation, Germany.

During the last 25 years Carsten Hellpap worked at the German Development Agency GTZ now GIZ. Mr. Hellpap was head of the German Appropriate Technology and Ecoefficiency programme (GATE), supporting the introduction and dissemination of different types of technologies in developing countries, considering economic, environmental and social factors. In 2005, he became director of the international energy access programme Energising Development (EnDev), which is active in 25 countries and has been financed by six European donors.
In addition to the practical work as project manager, he prepared publications and papers on technological and environmental issues and he was lecturer at the University of Darmstadt in Germany.
Currently, he is senior energy advisor for the consulting company Innovative Infrastructure Development based in Frankfurt.

Dr. Ana María Loboguerrero is the Head of Global Policy Research of the CGIAR Research Program for Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), based in Cali, Colombia. In this position, she plays a major role in leadership on partnerships and capacity for scaling Climate-Smart Agriculture that cuts across all CCAFS Flagships and Regions and all CGIAR Research Programs. She also leads global engagement processes and global synthesis topics such as the “Transforming Food Systems under a Changing Climate” initiative, which aims to realize a transformation in food systems by mobilizing knowledge and catalyzing action. Ana Maria also leads the Latin American Section of CCAFS. In this position, she plays a major role in partnership development aimed to build impact pathways so that knowledge in climate change leads to implementation. Ana María holds a Master and a PhD on Economics from University of California, Los Angeles, USA (UCLA). Before joining the CGIAR, Ana María worked at the Sustainable Environmental Development Deputy Directorate of the National Planning Department of Colombia as coordinator of climate change. While at the deputy directorate, Dr. Loboguerrero led the formulation of the Colombian Climate Change Policy, the National Adaptation Plan, the National Development Plan and the research agenda on climate change as well as coordinated technical support for the Colombian Low Carbon Growth Strategy.

Dr. Naomi Keena is an architect, interdisciplinary researcher, and lecturer at Yale University’s Center for Ecosystems in Architecture (CEA) and Yale School of Architecture. She earned a PhD in Architectural Sciences from the Center for Architecture Science and Ecology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her doctoral research focused on implementing annotated, data visual analytics as a means to investigate the material and energy lifespan of buildings during the early stages of architectural design. She is a co-founder of Clark’s Crow a parametric tool that aims to promote awareness of the impact of different design options through a biophysically based ecological accounting method in the early stages of design-development. She is also a co-founder of SEVA (Socio-Ecological Visual Analytics), a proposed new conceptual network of analytical techniques designed to quantify, visualize, characterize, and communicate socio-ecological factors within architectural designs. Keena’s current research investigates visual analytics combined with transformative building technologies as a means to study socio-ecological factors within architectural design, towards the mitigation of adverse environmental impacts. She demonstrated this research through the Ecological Living Module (ELM) built project at the United Nation Plaza, NY Summer 2018 as part of CEA in collaboration with Gray Organschi Architecture, Yale University, and UN Environment; as well as through CEA’s BEEM lab immersive visualization environment at Yale School of Architecture. Keena is a Fulbright Fellowship recipient and has published and presented her design research widely in the areas of architecture, computer science, data visualization, design-driven interdisciplinary research, and environmental policy.

John C. Anyanwu is Lead Research Economist in the Macroeconomic Policy, Forecasting & Research Department of the African Development Bank. Prior to joining the AfDB, he was full Professor of Economics, Department of Economics & Statistics, University of Benin, Nigeria; Health Economist/Economic Adviser to Resident Representative, WHO, Lagos, Nigeria; and Consultant to the AfDB and International Health Policy Program. He had also been Chief Planning Officer in the former Strategic Planning Division of the AfDB. Anyanwu holds a Ph.D and MSc in Economics from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and Master’s degree in Entrepreneurship and Economic Development from the University of Houston-Victoria, USA. He had had training/Executive Education courses at London School of Economics (UK) & Harvard University (USA) and was a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University (USA).



Among others, Anyanwu has conducted studies and published in the areas of Gender Equality (Education, Health, Employment, etc), Women and Men, Macroeconomics & Economic Growth, Development and Planning Economics, Economics of Poverty and Inequality, Public Finance, International Finance, Money and Banking, Regional/Monetary Integration, Natural Resources and Natural Resource Management and Socio-Economics (especially Health Economics & Economics of Education). Part of his passion is working to see gender equality in education, health, employment/empowerment, pay, etc. as a key source of high, sustained and inclusive development. He is Editor, African Development Review, a quarterly journal of the African Development Bank devoted to the study of development issues in Africa.



Anyanwu is a member, Association for the Advancement of African Women Economists (AAAWE), International Health Economics Association (iHEA), the African Finance and Economics Association (AFEA), and the National Economic Association (USA), and belongs to a number of research networks such the Global Development Network (GDN), African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), the Institute of International Finance (IIF), and the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). He is a life member and former Secretary & Vice President, Nigerian Economic Society. Anyanwu had been a Director and President of the African Finance and Economics Association (AFEA).



He has authored over 130 (this includes over 100 journal articles) scholarly publications in national and international journals in addition to authoring/co-authoring more than 35 book chapters and a number of books. Anyanwu has also been a key speaker and has had his papers read at more than 100 conferences/seminars/workshops worldwide. He benefitted from PhD Thesis awards and many research grants and had attended a series of managerial/leadership courses.



With excellent written and spoken English and some reading, spoken and written knowledge of French, Anyanwu has an excellent ability to analyze situations, a strong analytical mind and writes with clarity and precision. He always approaches his work with diligence and commitment while being helpful to, and collaborative with, all his colleagues.



As a person, Anyanwu is a person of character – courteous and polite – bright but humble. He easily gets along well with his colleagues, superiors as well as peers while displaying a high team spirit accompanied by high sense of maturity and diplomacy.

Fridah Kanana Erastus is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Linguistics, Kenyatta University, Kenya. She holds a Bachelor of Education (Arts) degree, Master of Arts degree in English and Linguistics from Kenyatta University, and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Frankfurt, Germany. Her research interests are in Bantu Linguistics, Dialectology, language use and multilingualism, Applied Linguistics and Pedagogy. She has several publications to her name.


Fridah works as a resource person for Siemens Foundation, Germany, in their youth empowerment programme; Commonwealth of Learning (COL) projects on rolling out of Open Resources for English Language Teaching (ORELT) modules; Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, where she is contracted to develop the English and Communication Curriculum for the proposed National Open University of Kenya (NOUK); German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and The Kenya DAAD Scholars Association (KDSA) as a research and academic mentor. She is also a reviewer of several refereed journals and a Board member of several organisations. Fridah is also among the 20 inaugural fellows of the Africa Science Leadership Programme (ASLP) and a member of the prestigious Global Young Academy (GYA).


She has successfully supervised several masters’ students. Currently she is supervising three PhD students and over 30 postgraduate students. She has many years of experience as an academic mentor, having worked in the University for over 14 years. Some of the mentorship initiatives she has been involved in include proposal writing for PhD, grant writing and writing for publication. She has also experience in South- South and North-South Collaboration having worked on successful projects with scholars from across the world. She is an active member of a network of scholars working on African Urban Youth Languages in Africa, a network spearheaded by the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Fridah joins the International Support Network for African Development (ISNAD) with a wealth of national, regional and International experience.

Anna Görner is the Managing Course Director at the Centre for International Postgraduate Studies of Environmental Management (CIPSEM), Technische Universität Dresden, Germany.



She has several years of experience in designing and implementing training programmes for professionals from developing and newly industrialised countries, including short courses on renewable energy sources and energy efficiency. She also serves on the selection committee for the International Climate Protection Fellowship Programme of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The study programmes guided by her are designed to support the participants for their tasks of planning, coordination and management of environmental resources within ministries, agencies or local government units – thus enabling them to actively support the environmentally sound and sustainable development of their countries.



For this, theoretical training discussing environmental problems and solutions complements a multitude of excursions presenting impressions of successfully implemented environmental management practices and providing opportunities for professional exchange. The third important aspect of the courses is the chance for dialogue among fellow participants coming from different regions of the world.