Leonie Wenz: Professor of Environmental Economics at the TU Berlin

The research objective of the W3 professorship for ‘Environmental Economics: Climate Damage & Adaptation’ at the Faculty of Planning, Building and Environment is to quantify the effects of climate change on economic development and human well-being and to identify adaptation measures at an individual, regional and international level. One focus is on the so-called social costs of climate change (‘Social Cost of Carbon’). These indicate how high the social costs of each additional tonne of CO2 emitted will be, which is an important basis for climate policy decisions.
This research strategy is largely driven by the Lab ‘Social Change and Well-being’ at PIK, which is led by Leonie Wenz, using a variety of data analytical methods, including statistics, econometrics, machine learning and numerical modelling techniques.
Leonie Wenz has been honoured several times for her outstanding scientific contributions, including the Leibniz PhD Prize, the Piers Sellers Prize and the Sir Richard Stone Prize. She has also been named one of Capital magazine's ‘Top 40 under 40’ in the past two years. A mathematician by training, she completed her doctorate in climate physics in Potsdam and was a postdoc in resource economics at UC Berkeley. She is a member of the Young Academy at the Leopoldina and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW).