Maria Oberhofer is a student at Innsbruck University and former intern at the Office of Science & Technology at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, DC.

She has been studying translation and interpreting of English and Russian at the University of Innsbruck since 2005. Within her program of studies, she attended the summer school at Kursk University and studied for one semester at Yakutsk State University.

• Introducing Scholar of German Studies Maria-Regina Kecht – There and Back Again (October 15, 2009)

Alexander Ochs is Director of the Worldwatch Institute's climate and energy program. He provides strategic leadership on climate and energy policy, represents the Institute before public and private decision makers and the media, leads the Institute's fundraising in the field, supervises program staff, and provides overall management and supervision of the Program. His areas of expertise include international climate negotiations; domestic climate and energy policies of the United States and Europe as well as China, India, and other major developing countries; opportunities and costs of a green new deal and a third industrial revolution; global governance and U.N. reform; as well as environmental security issues.

Until recently, he was Director of International Policy at the Center for Clean Air Policy, a recognized world leader in climate and air-quality policy headquartered in Washington, D.C. He is the founding director of the Forum for Atlantic Climate and Energy Talks (FACET) and a Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University. Between 2001 and 2007, Alexander worked as a senior research associate in the global issues department of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. At the SWP, he co-founded and later directed the International Network to Advance Climate Talks (INTACT)

Ochs has held research and teaching positions at the City University of New York, Princeton University, and Munich University, as well as at the Freie and Humboldt Universities in Berlin. He has been a member of the German delegation to the U.N. climate negotiations and various advisory committees on both sides of the Atlantic. A co-editor of two books and author of numerous scholarly articles and policy papers, Alexander contributes frequently to public media, e.g., as a regular commentator for Deutsche Welle, Germany's public international broadcaster, and Grist Magazine. He received various scholarships and research grants, was named a Young Leader by the Aspen Institute and served as elected member of tt30, a think tank of the Club of Rome. A graduate of Munich and Cologne universities, Ochs speaks fluent English, German, and French.

• From Flop’enhagen to Can’tcun? US climate policy before the mid-term elections and the UN summit (October 19, 2010)

Werner Olipitz is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA.

His research focuses on identifying mechanisms that predispose people to cancer and developing strategies to intervene in cancer formation.

Olipitz has been a member of the network Austrian Scientists and Scholars in North America (ASciNA) since 2005 and he currently serves as vice-president of ASciNA. He leads the ASciNA Mentoring project team and is the head of the ASciNA Greater Boston chapter.

Olipitz received his M.D. from the Medical University of Graz and was a resident in Internal Medicine, specializing in Hematology prior to joining MIT.

• ASciNA Mentoring Program Launched (December 21, 2009)

Michael Obersteiner is currently working in the Forestry Program of the IIASA where he is the principle investigator and scientific coordinator of the INSEA project. In addition to that he is a Research Economist with the Department of Economics and Finance at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, Austria.

He joined the Forestry Program in 1993 as a Guest Research Assistant. Since 2002 he has been a Research Scholar dealing with multiple research topics, including information technology and structural change of the global forest sector and carbon analysis complying with the Kyoto Protocol. Before going to IIASA, he was a visiting scientist at the Institute for Economics and Industrial Organization, the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, and he was a Fullbright Research Assistant at the College of Forest Resources at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.

Obersteiner received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Forestry, at the University of Agriculture and Forestry in Vienna, Austria.

• The Silent Tsunami: Linking The Global Food Crisis to Deforestation and Biofuels? (April 28, 2008)