Board members

Leire Barañano has a PhD in Business Management, Innovation and Knowledge from the University of the Basque Country (2022), and is the director of the NEIKER technology centre, which offers innovative solutions to the agri-food and forestry sector, and transforms scientific knowledge into contributions of value for companies. From NEIKER, she promotes, among others, the Basque Country's forestry bioeconomy strategy to encourage the generation of new added value opportunities based on the use of biological resources and sustainable production processes.

Prof. Dr. Verena C. Griess is a full professor at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Her work focuses on landscape level forest planning, and the development of decision support systems to forecast forest development over strategic timeframes, with a specific focus on including risks.

Verena’s work is based on knowledge from multiple disciplines, including forestry, operations research, decision theory, risk management, financial mathematics, and remote sensing.

She has extensive working experience in North America, Europe, and Central America, and has overseen projects in Asia and Africa.

Professor Emeritus at University of Eastern Finland (UEF), Docent at UH. 40 years forestry and land use experience, e.g. CEO of Metsähallitus, Director of Forestry at UPM, CEO of Bonvesta Ltd. Research interests include decision analysis, multifunctional forestry, forest planning. >350 publications, H-index (GS) 55. Scientific Achievement Award by IUFRO. Board member of A. Ahlström Real Estates Ltd. Positions of trust have included e.g. Chair of the Foundation for European Forest Research, Vice-President of EUSTAFOR.

Elena Paoletti is a Research Director at CNR-IRET. She is forest ecophysiologist with research and teaching experience on air pollution, climate change and vegetation in many countries; member of the Board of the European Forest Institute (EFI), and incoming Vice President of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO); Editor-in-Chief of Science of the Total Environment; active mentor of young scientists from all over the world; published 270 peer-reviewed papers (h-index 57).