Research Interests and Expertise

• Building simulation
  (energy performance, predictive control)
   
• Modelling of climate impacts
  (forest and agricultural ecosystems, hydrology, snow cover, buildings)
   
• Construction of regional climate change scenarios
  (downscaling, interpolation, weather generators, uncertainty propagation)
   
• Future climate of Europe and the Alps
  (validation of climate models, sensitivity and future evolution of the Alpine climate)

Education and Professional Experience

2007-present

Senior researcher at the Terrestrial Systems Ecology Group, ETH Zurich. Co-initiator and manager of the project "Use of Weather and Occupancy Forecasts for Optimal Building Climate Control" (OptiControl).

August 2009

Tow-days course on Project Management Leadership Skills at ETH Zurich.

Spring 2007

Short course on "Model Predictive Control" at the Automatic Control Laboratory, ETH Zurich.

2003-2007

Freelance scientist and senior researcher at the Terrestrial Systems Ecology Group, ETH Zurich. Co-Principal Investigator of the NCCR project "The Long-term Evolution of the Forest Functions Biodiversity and C-sequestration in a Variable and Changing Climate" (ForFuncs).

2003-2005

Project "Downscaling of Temperature Extremes in the Alps", a contribution of the Climate and Background Ozone Research Group, University of Bern, to the EU project "Statistical and Regional dynamical Downscaling of Extremes for European regions" (STARDEX).

2002-2003

Travelling through China, Southeast Asia and Australia.

1999-2002

Research associate and selfemployed scientific contractor associated with the Climatology and Meteorology Group, Institute of Geography, University of Bern. In charge of various research projects.

1997-1999

Post-Doc at the Climatology and Meteorology Group, Institute of Geography, University of Bern. Participation in the Swiss Priority Program Environment (Phase II), project "Sensitivity and Uncertainty Analyses of Climate Scenarios and Ecosystem Responses in the Alps (SENSUALP) - Part A: Bioclimatic Scenarios".

1995-1997

PhD thesis "Projecting scenarios of climatic change and future weather for ecosystem models: derivation of methods and their application to forests in the Alps" under the supervision of Dr. A. Fischlin (Systems Ecology), Prof. H. Flühler (Soil Physics) and Prof. A. Ohmura (Climatology) at the Department of Environmental Sciences, ETH Zurich.

1993-1997

Selfemployed scientific contractor associated with the Systems Ecology Group, ETH Zurich. Participation in the Swiss Priority Program Environment (Phase I), project "Case Studies in Bioclimatic Scenario Derivation".

Autumn 1992
& Summer 1993

Two-monthly stays as a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany.

1991-1992

Full-time research scientist associated with the Systems Ecology Group, ETH Zurich. Collaboration in the research project "Derivation of Climate Scenarios in the Alpine Region - a Swiss contribution to EPOCH/FuturAlp".

1988-1993

Various postgraduate courses in Statistics, Systems Theory, Computer Sciences, Environmental Sciences and Climatology.

1988-1991

Part-time industry employment as a software engineer, collaboration in the development of a knowledge-based statistical inference system for business applications.
Collaboration in the research project "Workstation-assisted Ecological Modeling & Simulation and the Impact of Climate Change on Ecosystems in an Alpine Region (ForAgroClim)" at the Systems Ecology Group, ETH Zurich.

1983-1988

Studies in Electrical Engineering (Dipl. El. Ing.) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich).