Speakers

Silvia Abruscato coordinates the Secretariat of the Forest Risk Facility (FoRISK). Her role aims to strengthen transnational collaboration in forest risk management, with a focus on the science-policy interface. She holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. She firmly believes that strengthening collaboration and creating trustful dialogues between scientists, policymakers, and practitioners are necessary to face global challenges. 

She began her career as a junior researcher in the EFI Resilience Programme, focusing on integrating nature protection into forest management. She transitioned into the international forest policy arena while working for the Federal Ministry for Food and Agriculture of Germany (BMEL), serving as a policy advisor to the FOREST EUROPE Secretariat. 

Prof. Dr. Verena C. Griess is a Full Professor at ETH Zürich, Switzerland. Her research focuses on advancing decision-making in forestry by addressing the essential question: What should we do, where, and when?—to ensure a sustainable and resilient future for forests and society.

Her team develops next-generation decision support systems that leverage satellite imagery, drone-based LiDAR, and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data to transform how forests are mapped, monitored, and managed. These innovations enhance forest inventories with greater speed, precision, and rich insights into tree height, biomass, forest health, and economic value.

Beyond data collection, Prof. Griess investigates how various management strategies and climate change scenarios affect forest landscapes, integrating complex dynamics such as wildfires, pests, and extreme weather events. She is also a pioneer in the use of immersive virtual reality to communicate research findings—enabling policymakers, industry stakeholders, and the public to experience potential forest futures in an intuitive and impactful way.

Maria Iwarsson Wide is a forester and research director at Skogforsk, with expertise in forest value chains, forest fuels, ecosystem services and communication. She leads the research programme Value-Creating Ecosystem Services and manages a multidisciplinary team of around 20 researchers. Her work focuses on strengthening the forest-based value chain and developing methods to address trade-offs and enhance synergies between forest values – from raw material supply and sustainability reporting to biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and recreation.

Tomáš Hlásny is a professor of forest biology at the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague. His work focuses on forest disturbance ecology, climate change adaptation, and strategies to enhance both ecological and social resilience. He has a particular expertise in forest biotic risks and their management in Europe. In this field, he actively contributes to international science-policy platforms, including the Pan-European Forest Risk Facility, and actively transfers scientific knowledge to forest management practice.

Annechien Hoeben is a PostDoc at the Department of Environmental Systems Sciences at the University of Graz in Austria. In her PhD, she focused on resilience within wood-based value chains, with particular emphasis on decision-making processes related to climate adaptation. Currently, she is involved in two projects concerning the wood value chain: one exploring applications of bio-based, lignin-derived chemistry, and the other examining long-term decision-making in wooden construction.

Dr. Tomáš Krejzar is Director of the Department of Forest Policy and Economics at the Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic. He has many years of experience in the fields of international and national forest and wood policy, EU forest-related legislation, or state aid in forestry. He is currently the chairman of the EFI Council. He is a member of the EFI Multi-Donnor Trust Fund on Policy Support Steering Committee. He also chairs the UN ECE Committee on Forest and Forest Industry.

Laura Liepiņa is a research programme officer in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development, specializing in forestry and bioeconomy. She has a background in environmental science and forestry. In her previous roles, she worked in the Latvian Ministry of Agriculture and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, focusing on climate change mitigation in land use sectors, and bioeconomy.

Marcus Lindner is the Head of the Resilience Programme. He holds a degree in forest sciences from the University of Freiburg and a PhD in Geoecology from University of Potsdam in Germany. Marcus has 30 years of experience in research on climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation strategies in forest management, disturbance risk management, forest sector sustainability, forest resource assessments and ecosystem service provisioning from European forests. His work often targeted the science-policy-practice interface and included several policy support studies for different DGs. He is currently coordinating the Horizon2020 project RESONATE on forest & forest value chain resilience.

Tom Pugh is a scientist interested in interactions between the terrestrial biosphere, humans and the global climate system. His work particularly focuses on forest dynamics, both natural and management-driven, and how they influence the land carbon sink and other ecosystem services at scales from local to global. He investigates these combining computational modelling (see https://www.nateko.lu.se/lpjguess) and building collaborations to make large-scale observational syntheses.

Dr. Werner Rammer is a Senior Scientist at the Technical University of Munich. His expertise is in forest ecology and global change, with a focus on the development and application of forest ecosystem models, including the models iLand and SVD. His research interests include climate change impacts, disturbance ecology, ecosystem services, and forest management. He has a strong background in developing and applying computational models for ecological research.

As a M.Sc. in Forest Ecology and Management, Vera Steinberg works as a Policy Advisor for the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Regional Identity, Germany. She is working in the Unit of European and International Forest Policy and represents Germany in the Amsterdam Declarations Partnership, the Forest Europe Process, the INTEGRATE network and the EFI Policy Support Trust Fund Steering Committee.

Jernej Stritih is a Slovenian forester and a leading expert in international and national environmental and sustainability policies. He started his career researching natural forest dynamics. He held positions in government, the private sector, and international NGOs. He contributed to Slovenia’s and SEE's forestry and conservation reforms linked to rural development. He has worked on projects related to EU accession, biodiversity, forestry, and climate change. Currently, he is a consultant to the EU Commission, supporting the implementation of the EU Forest Strategy 2030.

Prof. Dr. Simon Thorn – Leads the chair of Applied Ecology at the University of Marburg and the Hessian State Institute for the Protection of Birds. His scientific work focuses on the effects of natural disturbances and associated management on biodiversity, including experimental field studies as well as ecological syntheses.