Portfolio (PDF version)
Integrated thinking is needed to adapt landscapes and agriculture to climate change and increasing population pressure. I have many years of experience in this area with core skills in environmental physics, plant ecology and agronomy. Wetland policy advice and landscape futures research motivated me to extend these skills to policy process theory, environmental psychology and socio-ecology. As a data scientist and modeler, I also have a wide range of methods at my disposal to analyze scientific and human issues at different levels of organization.
The collaborative research projects I was working on have ended. I am currently in search of employment.
I offer expertise in following areas:
Socio-Ecology: Farmer-land relations, cultural psychology, landscape ecology, valuation
Policy-process theory: Major theories with focus on Advocacy Coalition and Narrative Policy Frameworks, environmental conflict solutions
Environmental Psychology: Cognition and embodiment, development psychology, imagination, placemaking
Environmental Physics: Agricultural meteorology, measuring and modeling heat and mass flux patterns including trace gas emissions, design of environmental instrumentation
Plant Ecology: Plant-water relations, integrative plant-physiology
Agronomy: Crop modeling, irrigation scheduling
Research Integration: Development and testing of environmental research concepts, interfacing science, humanities and engineering, continuous interest in broader contexts, empathic listener, thinking out of the box when appropriate, dedicated to working towards a common goal, communication and project management skills
Data science: Python, Tensorflow, PyTorch, R, SQL, Java
Professional expertise
Farming (since 1981)
Agroecology (since 1984)
Environmental Physics (since 1990)
Ecological Environmental Protection (since 1994)
Research Integration and Management (since 1998)
Environmental Policy-Making (since 2008)
Farmer-land relations (since 2011)
Methodological expertise
Solution-oriented research and development
Artificial intelligence and data science (certified 2024)
Mixed data analysis, modelling and information design
Transdisciplinary cooperation and field research
Further expertise
International Environmental Research (since 1984)
Operation, improvement and development of environmental instrumentation (since 1984)
Member of several collaborative research projects in various functions (since 1998)
PhD supervision (since 2003)
University Teaching: Environmental sciences and quantitative modelling (since 2003)
Scientific policy advice in East-Africa (since 2008)
Major contributions
Characterizing light extinction and microclimate at small forest streams (1995)
Validation of the Penman-Monteith equation in contrasting climates (1997)
Tree energy-balance model (2006)
Validation of the CERES crop growth model (2008)
New closed chamber method for measuring canopy gas-exchange (2012)
Improved heat-balance method for measuring sap-flow in plants (2014)
Improved plant-functional type parameterization of the Community-Land Model CLM (2015)
Integrated plant-physiology concept (2020)
New policy-process theory for environmental policy-making (2023)
New method “Cognitive-driven information design” for environmental policy-making (2023)
New theory for understanding farmer-land relations (2024)
Education
Farmer Journeyman (1987)
Diplom International Agronomy (1992)
Diplom Ecological Environmental Protection (1995)
PhD with distinction: Cultural Engineering and Water Management (1997)
Professor of Modelling Plant Systems (2005)
Data Scientist and AI Developer (2024)