Aarhus University Seal

Who's Who

Aarhus University (AU) is the second largest University in Denmark, educates 44,500 students and about 450 PhD students annually with 11,550 permanent staff. In 2017, AU ranked number 101 at the Leiden Ranking, number 119 at the QS World University Ranking, and number 109 of 17,000 universities on the Times Higher Education World University Ranking. AU ranges among the top ten universities founded within the past 100 years. AU also ranks as one of the leading universities in environmental research according to U.S. News Best Global Universities ranking. AU has a long tradition of partnerships with some of the world's best research institutions and university networks. AU has been/is participating in 295 FP7 and 190 H2020 and Marie Curie projects and has 39 ERC-grants. AU was/is the coordinator of 21 FP7 and 20 H2020 projects. AU has a very successful track record of managing both individual fellowships and large international projects and of hosting visiting researchers of all career stages for both training and knowledge transfer purposes. Internationalisation is part of the University’s mission and it continuously works to strengthen the international profile of the University through a series of initiatives which will increase international research partnerships and the number of international students.

Further information and key figures can be found at http://www.au.dk/en/about  

AU-ENVS is an interdisciplinary department, with expertise ranging from physics, chemistry, microbio­logy and mathematical modelling to emission modelling, social science, geography, economics and policy analysis. The department conducts basic and applied research related to some of the major challenges facing society and their potential solutions. This includes i.a.: climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation in urban and rural areas; the role of behavioural change in contributing to climate change mitigation, the significance of carbon pricing and other policy instruments to curbing GHG emissions, modelling health impacts and external costs of air pollution and the link to climate change, and the role of biodiversity and ecosystem services for human well-being. AU-ENVS heads the AU Interdisciplinary Centre for Climate Change, AU Interdisciplinary Centre for Climate Change iClimate, with focus areas in relation to society and climate spanning social systems, energy systems, urban systems, agricultural systems, carbon neutral production systems, monitoring, reporting and verification and climate data services. AU-ENVS also hosts the BERTHA Big Data Centre for Environment and Health.

AU-MPE was established in 2011 and is responsible for all research and development activities and talent development in the technical science field, and for the educations Master of Science in Engineering and Bachelor of Science in Engineering programmes. In the Energy System and Thermodynamics research area, large-scale models of sustainable low-carbon energy systems based on weather-driven renewables are developed using a broad methodical portfolio from system engineering, physics and energy economics. A particular focus is on the optimal design of techno-economic transformation pathways, which take into account all energy sectors as well as their societal impacts. On regional and city scales, district energy systems are investigated and new concepts for energy storage and flexible conversion are developed including conventional turbomachinery technologies.

AU-GEO focuses on researching the evolution of our climate in time. This is done by reconstructing past environmental changes spanning most geographical regions across the globe with special focus on the Artic. In particular, the fact that climate change is driven by complicated non-linear feedback mechanisms requires long time series of multiple proxies recorded in geological archives. The department also have a strong focus on climate mitigation and adaptation using state-of-the-art geoscientific method such as transient electromagnetics, seismology and remote sensing as well as Earth System Models.

AU-AHS is an interdisciplinary department focusing on people and the environment, on culture and society from the earliest to modern times. On the basis of fieldwork, archive and laboratory studies, and in collaboration with anthropology, history the geological, environmental and climate sciences, we investigate and challenge our understanding of past societies seen in a long time perspective. The archaeology programme at Aarhus University has an international profile and strong research networks. A dynamic research environment provides the framework for large research projects, international conferences and a variety of visiting researchers, including the ERC-funded CLIOARCH and ANTHEA initiatives. A concern with human-environment relations, the impact of climate change and extreme environmental events on past societies as well as the role and impact of contemporary climate change in the heritage domain are central foci.

AU-ENVS Department of Environmental Science


Peter Langen (Male): Professor of Climate Modeling and iClimate center director. MSc in geophysics (2002) and PhD (2005) from the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. Peter Langen is an expert on climate models and applying them to large- and small-scale questions relating to climate change and feedbacks in the Arctic and globally. Specific topics include Arctic amplification and the coupling between the Arctic and lower latitudes, interactions between the atmosphere, ocean and ice in the climate system as well as the build-up, maintenance and melting of ice sheets in past, present and future climates. As former scientific leader of the development of the Danish Climate Atlas, he is experienced in applying statistical methods to climate model output and tailoring it to end-users


Carsten Suhr Jacobsen (Male). Professor and head of department. PhD in molecular microbial ecology from University of Copenhagen 1991. Microbial ecology of soil, groundwater and the Greenlandic Icecap is the main area of his research. Prof. Jacobsen believes that microbial ecology in the environment can only be described properly using combinations of molecular methods, biogeochemical techniques and classical microbiology. He has used significant amount of energy on quantification of nucleic acids directly extracted from soil, and has worked with different methods to quantify mRNA directly in soil. Sequencing all RNA – TotalRNA – both technical and bioinformatics has been developed in his lab and used in his most recent project. In all of Prof. Jacobsen’s research areas, he has been exploring the same basic methodologies, i.e. DNA and RNA based analyses of the microorganisms directly in environmental samples. This work is often parts of larger collaborative projects, and Prof. Jacobsen has often taken the initiative to these collaborative projects and served as center or project leader.


Mikael Skou Andersen (Male). Professor, MA and PhD in political science and government. His research addresses the greening of the economy, with focus on policy instruments, regulations and external costs related to environment and energy, especially the relationship between market-based instruments, governance institutions and technological innovations as a remedy for preventive and foresighted policies. His research is frequently interdisciplinary, connecting with insights and models from the natural sciences, aiming to inform policy making in specific areas, including on air pollution, heavy metals, nitrate leaching, drinking water supply, wastewater management, waste management and climate mitigation. Prof. Skou Andersen is presently coordinating the NORDFORSK funded research project NOWAGG: New Nordic Ways to Green Growth - strengthening the foundation for technological green growth innovation policy. He am member and vice-chair of the Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency (EEA). Ten years ago, Prof. Skou Andersen was a member of the CCICED international task force on economic instruments for energy efficiency in China. In 1987 as a student, he travelled 15 provinces of China.



Katarina Elofsson (Female). Professor, PhD in Economics from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in 2002. She has experience from analysis of the economics of natural resource management in both academia and governmental agencies, teaching at the undergraduate and advanced level, and supervision of PhD and Master students. Her research is applied to international, national and regional environmental policies affecting climate, water quality, and biodiversity. The analysis considers economically optimal management of static, dynamic and stochastic ecological systems, and evaluates implemented policies with respect to their economic and environmental effects. Katarina Elofsson has led and participated in many interdisciplinary research projects involving cooperation with natural scientists, as well as other social scientists.


Marianne Zandersen (Female). PhD, is an environmental economist working as a senior researcher at the Environmental Social Science Group at the Department of Environmental Science, AU. She has over 15 years of expertise in environmental economics specializing in monetary valuation, management of ecosystem services, nature-based approaches to climate adaptation and the economics of climate change with a specific focus on urban systems. Recent/ongoing relevant work includes a demonstration and citizen engagement project of combining nature based adaptation and biodiversity in an urban park in Denmark and deliberative valuation of preferences for nature based solutions in Europe and China. She has extensive experience leading and conducting research in cross-disciplinary international teams and engaging decision-makers and practitioners in research. She is the coordinator the H2020 project REGREEN – fostering nature-based solutions for equitable, green and healthy urban transitions in Europe and China. She coordinates pillar 4 in iClimate – Climate Society & Health, co-coordinates the Strategic Research Area of Climate Change, Mitigation and Adaption. She is a member of the Climate Council at the Municipality of Roskilde, Denmark.


Anders Branth Pedersen (Male). MSc and PhD in political science. Senior Researcher in environmental policy analysis. ABP’s research is primarily centered on environmental policy analyses and environmental governance. E.g. through analyses of the effectiveness of environmental policies and policy instruments, analyses of implementation barriers and analyses of multi-level environmental governance. He is an experienced PI - e.g. through several projects for the Danish EPA. ABP has a broad network of research and professional contacts nationally and internationally which primarily builds upon participation in >30 national and international research and advisory projects, review responsibilities and stays at Uppsala University, the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. He has been collaborating in international research projects with >60 research institutions/consultancies across Europe. Since 2013, ABP has been teaching implementation problems in water and environmental policies at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.


Steen Solvang Jensen (Male). MSc (Eng.) in planning, PhD, Senior researcher. His research and development focus on integrated modelling systems for air pollution,  human exposures, health impacts and related social costs with applications within air pollution epidemiology and decision-support within urban air quality assessment and management with focus on policy options within transport and wood stoves. His research also focuses on climate mitigation emphasising the relation between environment and renewable energy sources (solar, bioenergy) and alternative fuels for the transport sector (hydrogen, biofuels, biogas, electricity). During the last 25 years, he has led and participated in a large number of national and international research and advisory projects of which many are interdisciplinary combining natural and social sciences. He is co-coordinator of Strategic Growth Area for Sustainable Energy, Climate and Society.


Lars Kjerulf Petersen (Male). M.Phil. in cultural sociology, PhD in environmental sociology. More than 15 years’ experience as senior social scientist conducting applied and basic research in his field including investigations into household practices for energy consumption and production, household waste handling, media’s role in pro-environmental practice changes, processes of socio-technical transition, urban green structure and cultural services of biodiversity and ecosystems. More than 20 years’ experience in teaching and supervision at university level.


Pedro Neves Carvalho (Male). MSc and PhD in chemistry. Researcher in environmental chemistry and fate of pollutants in the environment. More than 14 years of experience working with organic micropollutants and for the past 10 years studying water infrastructure. His interests spread from pollutant metabolomics to nature-based solutions, circularity and water reuse, as climate changes and adaption/mitigation call for an integrated and multidisciplinary effort. Participant in >6 EU projects dealing with the development of eco-technology for water treatment and resources recovery; >5 national projects dealing with fate of pollutants in aquatic environment; current member of the Cost Action CA17133 - Implementing nature-based solutions for creating a resourceful circular city. Collaborating with SMEs, water utilities and Danish EPA for safeguarding water resources.


Helle Ørsted Nielsen (Female). PhD in political science, senior researcher. Research on behaviour of policy target groups, effectiveness and policy instruments; policy implementation at national and local levels and policy coherence and integration. Her research covers the the fields of climate, energy and climate adaptation policy, agro-environmental policy, and water policy. Current research projects include  ACCESS - Advancing Communities towards Low-carbon energy smart systems; Greenmix –multiscalar polixy mixes for green growth. Previously, she had led projects on Danish and European pesticide policy and evaluating the Danish pesticide tax. She is a member of the scientific advisory board  of the Coast2Coast Climate Challenge project on climate adaptation Also affiliated with the Department of Political Science, where she teaches at bachelor and master levels


Toke Emil Panduro (Male). Msc. in Geoinfomation, Ph.D. in spatial environmental economics, Senior Researcher at Aarhus University. Toke’s research has mainly focused on economic valuation, property model estimation, large-scale spatial data analysis, and urban planning. Toke is a skilled spatial econometrician, a proficient programmer, and a GIS expert. At the moment, Toke is also working on projects relating to climate adaption to extreme precipitation events and storm flood events. The research questions involved cover attempt to answer the following ideas:

What are the damage costs of flooding?
Who can/should pay for climate adaptation?
How do we finance climate adaptation projects? 


Doan Nainggolan (Male). BSc (Forestry), Master of Natural Resource Studies, MA and PhD in Ecological Economics, tenure track researcher. He undertakes applied research in the field of environmental and ecological economics; integrating spatial-biophysical and socio-economic data and processes in order to model the trajectories of socio-environmental systems in response to changes and to systematically assess the environmental and economic implications at different spatial and temporal scales. He has worked with GIS, farmer/household survey, choice experiment, econometrics, agent-based model, Input Output Analysis, and cost-minimization model. He has participated in interdisciplinary research activities on land use change in agro-ecosystems, water, climate change, ecosystem services and waste. His current works include reviewing the role of policy instruments for reducing emission and increasing sequestration of carbon from agricultural soils, forests and wetlands in the Nordic countries.


Frank Akowuge Dugasseh (Male), PhD Candidate. His research explores the use of nature climate solutions (Reducing Emission in Deforestation and Forest Degradation) as a mechanism for addressing climate change in the global south. The focus of his decade long professional career has evolved around natural resource governance, land policy analysis, climate change and agriculture, water, hygiene and sanitation, education and rural development and project management. Frank has worked and consulted on projects funded by IUCN, USAID, UNICEF, Man and Nature, and the Global Fund. He is currently also contributing to the CREAM project


AU-MPE Department of Mechanical and Production Engineering


Martin Greiner (Male). PhD, is a Professor at AU-MPE. He directs the Sustainable Energy System research group. He has been a research scientist at the University of Arizona, the Technical University and the Max-Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, at Duke University, and at Siemens Corporate Research & Technology in Munich. He has published more than 80 articles in refereed international journals and more than 55 papers in international proceedings. His current main field of interest is the fundamental research on highly renewable energy systems at the interface between system engineering, physics of complex networks and applied mathematics. He has published 28 articles in this field in high-impact journals such as Energy, Energy Policy or Renewable Energy. Martin co-coordinates iClimate Pillar 4.


Gorm B. Andresen (Male). PhD, is associate professor at AU-MPE where he leads the Renewable Energy and Thermodynamics research group (Twitter: @NRGYdynamics). The research of the group is concerned with the use of storage, transmission networks and energy conversion technology to facilitate integration of wind and solar energy in the energy system at all scales from continental to national and cities. This includes the effect of climate change on renewable energy systems. He lectures in theoretical and experimental courses in the domain of thermodynamics, flow and turbomachinery and renewable energy technologies and systems. The research targets high-impact international journals and is often executed in collaboration with industrial and public partners as well as internationally leading academic institutions. He holds a Ph.d. in experimental antihydrogen physics and co-authored the paper Trapped Antihydrogen published in Nature (2010).  Google scholar profile @:  https://scholar.google.dk/citations?user=8bfMJJYAAAAJ&hl=da&oi=ao


Marta Victoria (Female). Ph.D., is a associate professor at AU-MPE whose research focuses on the modeling of large-scale energy systems with high renewable penetration, as well as on modeling country-wise photovoltaic and wind time series.
She has over 10 years’ experience regarding the design, simulation, indoor and outdoor characterization of high-efficiency photovoltaic systems.
She has co-authored more 18 articles in high-impact scientific journals and has an h-index of 13.
She has participated in many public funded research projects and she has coordinated several working groups within FP-7 and H2020-funded collaborative projects.


Mahdi Abkar (Male). PhD, is an assistant professor at AU-MPE and he is the leader of the Flow Physics and Turbulence

research group. The focus of his research group is to develop and test improved numerical models for predicting the interactions between turbulent flows and the environment, with an emphasis on wind energy systems. His current research includes wind-farm modelling and optimization; large-eddy simulation (LES); boundary-layer turbulence; and uncertainty quantification. He received his PhD from EPFL (Switzerland) at 2014 followed by one year postdoc at EPFL and two years postdoc at the Center for Turbulence Research at Stanford University before joining Aarhus University. He has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals such as journal of fluid mechanics, physical review fluids, and physics of fluids. Google scholar profile @ scholar.google.com citations?user=x5kiBfYAAAAJ&hl=en



Devarajan Ramanujan (Male). PhD, is Head of Section, Design, Manufacturing, and Production Engineering & Associate professor at the Department of Mechanical & Production Engineering. He also leads the Lifecycle Design & Manufacturing research group. The overarching goal of the research group is enabling industrial green transition by integrating sustainability assessment tools (e.g., life cycle analysis) with technologies for product and process digitization. He received his PhD from Purdue University (USA) at 2015 followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) before joining Aarhus University. He has published over 40 publications in peer-reviewed conferences and journals including, the Journal of Cleaner Production, Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering, and Journal of Mechanical Design.

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5JHqo2oAAAAJ&hl=en


Aliakbar Kamari (Male). PhD, is an architect and engineer, building scientist, and educator. He is an Assistant Professor (tenure track) of Architecture Engineering at the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering, Aarhus University, Denmark. Aliakbar seeks to combine multifaceted research approaches, jointly tackling the Green and Digital transition challenges of the AECO sector. His research, therefore, aims to explore and deal with the growing (interdisciplinary nature) complexity of the processes and decision-making in the development of sustainable strategies and solutions for the design and/or renovation of buildings and so built environments. Aliakbar's work integrates three areas of expertise: Sustainability and Sustainable Development; Integrated Design methodologies and processes (IDP/IPD); and Building Information Modeling (BIM) methods and technologies.


Tim Pedersen (Male), is a PhD student at Aarhus University, Department of mechanical and production engineering  (MPE), in the Renewable Energy and Thermodynamics group. His research focuses on improving the energy system optimization models used for analysis  in the green transition of our energy supply. Using modern Modeling to Generate Alternatives (MGA) algorithms, Tim, studies near-optimal model solutions to uncover flexibility in the green transition of our energy supply. His current research, studies the technical limitations of ensuring a just energy transition of the European energy supply. Tim has expertise within the fields of convex optimization, uncertainty analysis, energy system modeling, and data analysis.

Link to google scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=da&view_op=list_works&gmla=AJsN-F7xq2OM3uq0Ft8C1lBLfWK0GYHhw8OeFqKRuBLkesuPjim8X-fklYKUTc10MN6xs7rUG5g_MVASa_E4niyIlCz9u1qjFoyWBCniU50uvuSefjWsK2w&user=dLA_owEAAAAJ

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AU-AHS Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies


Felix Riede (Male). Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology and core-group member of the Villum Foundation-funded centre BIOCHANGE - Center for Biodiversity Dynamics in a Changing World, MPhil and PhD from Cambridge University. His research bridges the historical human sciences, ecology and Earth System Sciences in addressing the changing dynamics of human-environment interactions across long time-scales, and how contemporary climate change affects cultural heritage. As PI of the ERC-funded project CLIOARCH, he uses climate modelling and eco-informatics techniques to infer how the niche spaces of past human communities changed vis-à-vis changing climates, and to project such dynamics into future climate scenarios. A particular focus here is on the impact of volcanic eruptions on climate and human societies, and on adaptations to arctic environments. Felix Riede is also co-chair of Future Earth’s Knowledge-Action Network on Extreme Events and Emergent Risks, and Associate Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies.


AU-GEO Department of Geoscience


Bo Holm Jacobsen (Male). PhD in geophysics, assoc. prof. at AU-GEO. Research background in methods of data processing and inverse modelling. Application areas e.g. Earth seismology, helioseismology and Atlantic Ocean temperatures as well as past solar activity, climate and erosion based on cosmogenic nuclides. Present interests and activities also in cross-disciplinary climate research and communication.

He coordinates the AU Summer University course “Climate Change – Cross-disciplinary Challenges and Solutions” (5 ECTS) Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.dk/citations?user=xOBpkZkAAAAJ&hl=en


Christoffer Karoff (Male). Cand.scient. astrophysics, PhD astronomy. My research profile is highly interdisciplinary crossing borders between Astronomy, Geoscience and Space Science. Specifically, I am working on a number of projects on monitoring and analysing the effects of climate change on natural and human systems using state-of-the-art remote sensing observations and advanced machine learning techniques.

On behalf of the national partnership, I am leading an application to the Innovation Fund Denmark and the Danish Industry Foundation on accelerating the green transition through the use of remote sensing. The partnership consists of more than 23 public and private partners including five different departments at Aarhus University.