IIASA is pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) Awards in recognition of outstanding research conducted during the program.
Each year, the YSSP Awards honor participants who have demonstrated exceptional creativity, scientific rigor, and relevance in addressing pressing global challenges. This year, two prestigious awards were once again granted: the Mikhalevich Award and the Levien Award. Additionally, four participants received honorable mentions for their excellent contributions.
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Parisa Javadi, Levien Award
YSSP Mentor: Yoga Pratama and Elina Brutschin
IIASA Program: Energy, Climate and Environment (ECE)
Program Director: Keywan Riahi
The Levien Award was granted to Parisa Javadi, a third-year PhD candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia. She is passionate about modeling varying climate mitigation pathways to understand the regional removal potential as well as the environmental, social, and economic implications of different CDR approaches. She won the award for her research titled The Role of Land and Ocean-Based Geochemical CO2 Removal Pathways in Climate Mitigation.
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Ross Tieman, Mikhalevich Award
YSSP Mentors: Brian Fath and Elena Rovenskaya
IIASA Program: Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA)
Program Director: Elena Rovenskaya
The Mikhalevich Award was awarded to Ross Tieman, a PhD candidate at the Australian National University's Fenner School of Environment and Society. His work focuses on modeling collective intelligence and complex systems, examining how information flows and network structures influence socio-ecological resilience. He won the award for his research titled, Resilience as an Algorithm: Online Measurement of Algorithmic Complexity Provides Predictive, Unique, and Practically Relevant Early Warning Signals for Critical Transitions”.
© Weiyi Gu, 2025
In addition to these awards, four participants received honorable mentions. Weiyi Gu, a third-year PhD candidate at the college of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at Peking University, China, was recognized for his research on Mapping Cost-effective Adaptation Pathways to Global Quantity- and Quality-induced Agricultural Water Scarcity. His work integrates water quantity and quality to evaluate agricultural water scarcity and identifies cost-effective adaptation strategies for vulnerable river basins.
YSSP Mentors: Taher Kahil and Julian Joseph
IIASA Program: Biodiversity and Natural Resources (BNR)
Program Director: Petr Havlík
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Tom Hackbarth, a PhD researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, received an honorable mention for his innovative work on Designing Nature-Positive Pathways for Europe’s Land and Food Systems which focuses on developing sustainable land-use change scenarios in Europe to support the EU’s 2030 biodiversity strategy and halt biodiversity loss.
YSSP Mentors: Louise O’Connor and Martin Jung
IIASA Program: Biodiversity and Natural Resources (BNR)
Program Director: Petr Havlík
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Sanda Ny Avo Mamiharimalala is a PhD researcher at INRAE, affiliated
with Université Paris-Saclay in France, and contributes to the AgEnRes project, funded by the European Commission through Horizon Europe. She received an honorable mention for her work titled, Disaggregating Non-Renewable Energy Use in EU Crop Systems: From Raw FADN Data to Robust Allocation Models. This work focuses on breaking down non-renewable energy use in EU crop systems using detailed farm data to better understand energy use, dependence, and resilience in agriculture.
YSSP Mentors: Felicity Addo and Tamas Krisztin
IIASA Program: Biodiversity and Natural Resources (BNR)
Program Director: Petr Havlík
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Veronika Schick, a second-year PhD student in the Department of Natural Resource Policy at ETH Zürich, was recognized for her research on Making Climate Adaptation Acceptable in a Polarized World - The Role of Identity for Distributive Justice Preferences. She examined how people’s identities and political views influence support for fair climate adaptation policies, including who pays and who benefits.
YSSP Mentors: Elliott Woodhouse and Thomas Schinko
IIASA Program: Population and Just Societies (POPJUS)
Program Director: Anne Goujon
The YSSP Awards highlight IIASA’s commitment to fostering interdisciplinary research and nurturing the next generation of system thinkers. Each winner has made significant contributions to advancing knowledge and addressing real-world challenges in climate change, economics, and sustainability.
“The YSSP Awards honor the exceptional talent and bold innovation of young researchers who are confronting some of the world’s most pressing and complex challenges,” says IIASA Capacity Development and Training Dean, Fabian Wagner. “This year’s awardees have not only advanced scientific knowledge, but have also shown how interdisciplinary collaboration can translate insight into real-world impact. We are proud to support their ongoing efforts to help shape solutions to critical global issues.”
The award winners will receive an award stipend to return to IIASA for a period of up to three months, within 36 months after accepting the award, to continue their YSSP research.
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