Michael Obersteiner is Program Director at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. At the Ecosystem Services and Management program he directs 60 staff. He holds a Phd from the University of Lifesciences in Vienna, an M.phil from the joint Program in economics from the Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna and Columbia University, New York. Dr. Obersteiner‘s research experience stretches from resource and energy economics to earth system sciences.
Dr. Obersteiner has held research positions at the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and University of Washington. During the past decade, Dr. Obersteiner has been the principle investigator of more than 50 international research projects covering diverse fields of different scales and numerous funding organizations.
Dr. Obersteiner has been a consultant and policy advisor to a number of national and international organizations, including inter alia the European Commission, Worldbank, OECD, Packard Foundation, and WWF. He is author of over 100 scientific papers and is on the editorial board of journals such as Applied Energy, Carbon Balance and Management and Frontiers in Environmental Science.