PhD Position in Combining Economy-wide Life-cycle Analysis with Integrated Assessment to Foster Sustainable Agri-Food Scenarios

12.09.2023, Wissenschaftliches Personal

The newly-created chair in „Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agricultural Systems” at TUM School of Management and TUM School of Life Sciences offers:

a PhD Position in "Combining Economy-wide Life-cycle Analysis with Integrated Assessment to Foster Sustainable Agri-Food Scenarios (ELIAS)" on the Freising-Weihenstephan Campus. The position (f/m/d) is offered for four years. Salary is in accordance with the German State Regulated Public Salary Scale (TV-L E13). Starting date will be as soon as an ideal candidate is found.

The ELIAS project: In the coming decades, we must both ensure food security and address severe environmental issues, including climate change, water stress, and biodiversity loss. Many of these impacts are caused in global supply chains of agri-food products, whose demand is expected to double by 2060. Thus, the development of robust sustainability policies is imperative, but necessitates comprehensive insights into global agri-food supply chains and their environmental impacts under future scenarios. Economy-wide life-cycle assessment (LCA) and integrated assessment models (IAM) offer two complementary methods to address this issue, but their harmonized potential remains largely untapped. While economy-wide LCA furnishes valuable information on global agri-food supply chains and their environmental footprints, it is limited in scenario modeling. Conversely, IAMs create future scenarios on optimal pathways for achieving the sustainable development goals, but lack in the consideration of global supply chains. Therefore, the ELIAS project aims to systematically bridge these two fields with high policy relevance to gain new insights on sustainable pathways for agri-food supply chains (e.g., dietary shifts) and to investigate trade-offs in the future bioeconomy (e.g., foods vs energy).

Tasks of the PhD candidate: The successful candidate will contribute innovative research to the ELIAS project in view of method development and application to case studies at national and global scales. This also includes dissemination by publication in peer-reviewed journals, participation at international conferences, and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and international exchange. Also, the student will contribute to teaching activities and competitive funding proposals of the chair.

Qualifications: In addition to a strong motivation for the ELIAS project, an excellent university degree and master thesis in environmental engineering/sciences or any related fields, you have distinguished qualifications in: - working with quantitative methods and large datasets - analytical thinking, mathematical skills, and programming (e.g., R, matlab or python) - working independently and in a team - written and spoken English Prior expertise in any of the fields of scenario modelling, IAM, economy-wide LCA (multi-regional input-output analysis), and environmental impact assessment is a significant advantage.

Offer: The position offers a doctoral degree in an innovative work environment that promotes creative thinking, novel solutions, interdisciplinary teamwork, and international collaboration as a response to the burgeoning global environmental challenges. The position offers individual career development in a field with high relevance for industry and policy, including high-quality supervision from the chair holder. More information on the chair is found here.

Application: Please send a cover letter that explains your area(s) of interest, your motivation for the ELIAS project, experiences and goals, your curriculum vitae including references, and copies of key documents (transcripts, degree certificates) in a single pdf to Prof. Dr. Livia Cabernard ([email protected]). The position remains open until filled.

Equal Opportunities & Diversity: As an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer, TUM explicitly encourages applications from women and all others who would bring additional diversity dimensions to the university’s research and teaching strategies. The position is suitable for employment of severely disabled persons. Severely disabled applicants will be given preference in the event of otherwise essentially equal suitability, ability and professional performance.

The position is suitable for disabled persons. Disabled applicants will be given preference in case of generally equivalent suitability, aptitude and professional performance.

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Kontakt: [email protected]