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)