Event Calendar

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

DATE: 15-10-2025

Prof. Phoebe Koundouri participated as a panel member at the ERC Starting Grant Mentoring Event, organised by the Young Academy of Europe (YAE) and the Academia Europaea Barcelona Knowledge HUB.

As an ERC grantee and Ambassador for the European Research Council (ERC), Prof. Koundouri supports initiatives that foster research excellence, mentorship, and the visibility of ERC programmes across Europe and beyond.

The Ambassadors for the ERC network, launched by the European Research Council (ERC) and the Association of ERC Grantees (AERG), unites ERC grantees to advocate for frontier research and highlight how scientific discovery drives economic growth and societal progress.

Dr. Katalin Solymosi and the organising team coordinated the event.

DATE: 15-10-2025

During the Science and Technology in Society Forum 2025 in Kyoto, Japan, Prof. Phoebe Koundouri spoke at the Biodiversity Session, which focused on the urgent need to address the accelerating loss of biodiversity and the challenges of translating scientific evidence into effective policy and action.

In her intervention, Prof. Koundouri approached biodiversity from an integrated economic modeling and valuation perspective, emphasizing holistic, science-based solutions to implement global biodiversity commitments within the UN Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

She presented a three-stage framework developed by the UN SDSN Global Climate Hub, which she chairs, to guide biodiversity resilience and conservation management. This framework involves measuring and monitoring biodiversity using satellites, drones, IoT, and AI; modeling and co-designing interconnected systems that link biodiversity with climate, land use, agriculture, and marine ecosystems; and financing and embedding biodiversity within economic and financial systems by valuing natural capital and integrating it into cost–benefit analyses and national accounts.

Prof. Koundouri emphasized that effective biodiversity management depends on recognizing and valuing its contribution to the sustainable interaction among nature, the economy, and society.

The session was chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, President of the International Science Council (ISC), and featured inspiring contributions from Prof. Andrew Fire (Stanford University School of Medicine, Nobel Laureate 2006), Dr. Doug Hilton AO (CSIRO, Australia), Philippe Mauguin (INRAE, France), and Adam Falk (Wildlife Conservation Society).