Speakers

Sangwon Suh

Sangwon Suh is a professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Professor of Sustainability Sciences, Leiden University, the Netherlands. He is currently a visiting professor at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He earned his PhD in industrial ecology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. His research focuses on the sustainability of the human-nature complexity through the understanding of materials and energy exchanges between them.

His work contributed to the theoretical foundations and practical applications of quantitative sustainability assessment in the areas of life cycle assessment (LCA) and industrial ecology. Dr. Suh served the International Resource Panel (IRP) of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) as a member and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a Coordinating Lead Author. He received the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship from the University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents, Leontief Memorial Prize and the Richard Stone Prize from the International Input-Output Association (IIOA), the Robert A. Laudise Medal from the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE), and Distinguished Teaching Award by the Bren School. He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment (ACLCA) in 2021.

Tamar Makov

Dr. Makov investigates the potential to address social and environmental challenges through sustainable business practices, technologies, and innovations. Adopting a systems approach, she draws from the fields of data science, public policy, and behavioral economics, and combines methods including machine learning, network analysis, and psychological experiments.

Her goal is to generate insights informing theory, policy, and real-world decision making on issues including pro-social behavior, inequality, and the circular economy.

Dominik Wiedenhofer

Dr. Dominik Wiedenhofer is a Senior Scientist and University Assistant at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. He holds a PhD and MSc in Human and Social Ecology from the Alpen-Adria University, Klagenfurt both finished with distinction, and a Bachelor of Science in Environmental and Bio-Resource Management from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. He has also worked as a Visiting Researcher at the University of Sydney, Australia and Nagoya University, Japan. His work has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals such as Nature Climate Change, Nature Sustainability, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of Industrial Ecology and Ecological Economics. He served as Contributing Author to the latest IPCC Report WG3, as well as a Lead Author for the APCC’s assessment report on climate friendly living in Austria.

Dominik’s research utilizes a socio-ecological systems perspective towards understanding the potentials and barriers for more sustainable society-nature interactions, integrating supply- and demand-side perspectives. He works on comprehensive assessments of the dynamics and interlinkages of societal resource use and the socio-economic material stocks of buildings, infrastructure, machinery and all products, which jointly provide functions and services to society. He furthermore links resource use and emissions across international supply chains to households, affluence and inequality, to better understand spillovers and interlinkages across the world economy. His work on sustainable resource use and the circular economy is widely cited and has even been taken up by the European Commission.

Lewis Akenji

Dr. Lewis Akenji is the Managing Director of Hot or Cool Institute, a Berlin-based public-interest think tank that champions science-based collaboration towards building a sustainable civilisation.

He has been featured on several global and local media outlets, including BBC, the Times, Reuters. He has consulted with organizations including United Nations agencies, the Asian and African Development Banks, the European Commission, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and has served as technical or science-policy adviser to several national government delegations,

including Finland, Japan, Sweden, Indonesia, Hungary.

Lewis conceived and led the 1.5-Degree Lifestyles project, analysing potential contribution of lifestyle changes to the aspirational 1.5 °C target under the Paris Agreement on climate change, and implications on equity and wellbeing.

He has an M.Sc. Sustainable Resource Management (Technical University Munich, Germany) and a Ph.D. Political Economy (University of Helsinki, Finland).

Vered Blass

Dr. Blass's research is positioned at the interface of industrial ecology and management sciences, focusing on decision-making and the measurement of economic and environmental performance, using a diverse set of tools and analysis methods. Her research agenda spans topics ranging from handling electronic waste, switching to new business models and technologies that bring to decoupling of economic growth from environmental impacts, to assessing energy alternatives for transportation.

Tzruya Calvão Chebach

Tzruya Calvão Chebach is an international consultant for environmental strategy and policy and the co-founder of Ments Visiveis based in Lisbon. Tzruya has over 15 years of experience working with government ministries, municipalities, government companies, UN organizations, environmental organizations, and with private companies in a variety of industrial sectors – from traditional industry to startups in clean-tech. Tzruya advanced some of the largest strategic national processes for environmental performance in areas such a

ss adaptation to climate change, transition to a circular economy, ESG, environmental procurement and R&D processes oriented towards resource efficiency. As part of her role as the chief advisor to the Director General at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Tzruya led key initiatives in the government's efforts on the climate crisis. She promoted climate legislation that was precedent-setting in its scope, and initiated large-scale projects for planning and building urban resilience, including a huge project to promote shading through street trees amounting to tens of millions of shekels. Tzruya specializes in translating an environmental vision into actual projects and activities using tools and analysis based on a whole life cycle perspective and thrives in complex multi-actor eco-systems. Through her research consultancy firm she was involved in multiple Horizon2020 projects and leading the transdisciplinary research in the H2020 HealthFoodAfrica project with 10 case studies in 6 countries in Western and Easter Africa. She teaches environmental regulation, environmental innovation, impact investment and environmental performance assessment in different universities and colleges including Reichman University and the Sapir College. Tzruya graduated with a master's degree in international economics and resource management from Johns Hopkins University and is currently an environmental management doctorate student at the Porter School of Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University. She is passionate about supporting climate leadership amongst young people and future leaders of climate change adaptation and she volunteers across high schools in setting climate leaderships programs.

Benjamin Sprecher

Benjamin Sprecher is an expert in critical raw material analysis and supply chain resilience, and works often in collaboration with industry partners. He is an Assistant Professor at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at TU-Delft and also woks in the field of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and has authored and co-authored multiple highly cited LCA studies. He also has knowledge of (consumer) product designs and how design influences sustainability.