//   SPEAKERS

Professor Dr. Phoebe Koundouri holds a PhD and MPhil in Economics and Econometrics from the  University of Cambridge (UK). She is Professor in Economic Theory and Policy, School of Economics,  Athens University of Economics and Business (Greece) and she is the elected President of the  European Association of Environmental and Natural Resource Economists EAERE. In the past she was elected Council Member (2012-2016) and appointed Vice- President (2014-2016) of the same association. EAERE is the most prestigious scientific association in the field of Natural Resource Economics worldwide with more than 1200 scientific member institutions from more than 75 different countries). Prof. Koundouri is listed in the most-cited women economists in the world, with 15 published books and more than 250 published scientific papers 

Prof. Phoebe Koundouri is also the Founder and Scientific Director of the Research Laboratory on Socio-Economic and Environmental Sustainability (ReSEES) at the Athens University of Economics and Business and an affiliated Professor at the ATHENA Research and Innovation Center https://www.athena-innovation.gr/en/home where she directs EIT Climate-KIC Hub Greece of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. She is also the co-chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Network Greece UN SDSN Greece, chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Centre for Research on the Environment and the Economy (ICRE8) and chair of the scientific advisory board of the European Forest Institute. Recently she has founded the think tank “European Cluster on Sustainability Transition”. 

In the past, Professor Koundouri has held academic positions at the University of Cambridge, University College London, the University of Reading and the London School of Economics. She acts as an advisor to the European Commission, World Bank, EIB, EBRD, OECD, UN, NATO, WHO, numerous national and international foundations and organizations, as well as national governments in all five continents. Notably she is currently member of the drafting Prime-Misterial Committee for 10-year development and recovery plan for Greece, as well as in the Climate Change Committee of the Greek Ministry of Environment and Energy. She holds a global leadership role in the UN SDSN for European Green Deal (EGD) implementation, Sustainable Shipping and Ports, 4-seas Blue Growth Initiative and is leading (together with Prof. Jeff Sachs) the Senior Working Group on Transformation Pathways for the implementation of EGD. She is also a member of the CEPR (Center for European and Policy Research) Network (RPN) on Climate Change https://cepr.org/content/cepr-rpn-climate-change-researchers and a Commissioner of the New Lancet Commission on COVID-19 of the Lancet and the Earth Institute and Sustainable Development Institute of the University of Columbia, US https://covid19commission.org/commissioners.

Since 1997, she has coordinated more than 80 interdisciplinary research and deep demonstration projects and has attracted significant competitive research funding, while she has supervised about 30 PhD students. She coordinates the EIT Climate KIC Accelerator and has been a mentor and mobilizer of the European Innovation Acceleration Ecosystem. Professor Koundouri and her large interdisciplinary team (more than hundred researchers) have produced research and policy results that have contributed to accelerating the research solutions and commercialization for the sustainability transition in Europe, as well as shaping European policies. Over the last two decades, Professor Koundouri has given keynote and public lecturers all over the world and received various prizes for academic excellence.