Elena Rovenskaya
Program Director and Principal Research Scholar
Advancing Systems Analysis Program
Acting Research Group Leader and Principal Research Scholar
Exploratory Modeling of Human-natural Systems Research Group
Advancing Systems Analysis Program
Biography
Elena Rovenskaya is the IIASA Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA) Program Director. Her scientific interests lie in the fields of optimization, decision science, and mathematical modeling of complex socio-environmental systems.Rovenskaya graduated in 2003 from the Faculty of Physics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia. She received her PhD in 2006 at the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia. In her PhD dissertation, she developed a new numerical method for solving a broad class of non-convex optimization problems.
In 2005, she participated in the IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP). She continued to collaborate with the former Dynamic Systems (DYN) Program from 2006 to 2010, and later, from 2011 to 2012 with its successor, the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program at IIASA. From 2013 to 2020, Rovenskaya served as ASA Program Director and from 2019 to 2020, she was also appointed as Acting IIASA Evolution and Ecology Program Director.
In January 2021, Rovenskaya was appointed Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA) Program Director as the institute moved to a new program structure. Currently, the new ASA Program includes more than 140 scientists and aims to identify, develop, and deploy new systems-analytical methods, tools, and data that address the most pressing global sustainability challenges with greater agility, and help find solutions to those challenges that are both realistic and appropriate.
Last update: 01 JUL 2025
Publications
Strelkovskii, N. , Budka, P., Erokhin, D. , Komendantova, N. , Meyer, Al., Povoroznyuk, O., Rovenskaya, E. , Sancho-Reinoso, A., Schmid, K., & Schweitzer, P. (2026). Multi-scale scenario building for community development: Exploring transport infrastructure futures in the Circumpolar North. Futures 180 e103834. 10.1016/j.futures.2026.103834.
Yi, W., Liu, H., Peng, L., Liu, Z., Luo, Z., Rovenskaya, E. , Ng, S.H., Strelkovskii, N. , Yan, R., Wang, X., Yang, Z., He, T., Zhang, W., Cai, F., Zhang, Q., & He, K. (2026). Drivers and environmental impacts of Arctic shipping. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 10.1038/s43017-026-00790-2.
Yeganegi, R. & Rovenskaya, E. (2026). Disaster impact forecasting for risk-informed decision making with socioeconomic indices: evidence from earthquake-tsunami in India. DOI:10.5194/egusphere-egu26-21655. In: EGU General Assembly 2026, 03 May - 08 May 2026, Vienna.
Sedighi, E. , Golzar, H., Fath, B.D. , Kharrazi, A. , & Rovenskaya, E. (2025). Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Tigris and Euphrates River Basin Through Systemic Lenses. Energy Nexus 20 e100510. 10.1016/j.nexus.2025.100510. (In Press)
Żebrowski, P. , Boyarshinov, G., Odintsova, A., & Rovenskaya, E. (2025). Explaining COVID-19 dynamics through user activity data from digital platforms with Yandex’s self-isolation index as a case study. Scientific Reports 15 (1) e40709. 10.1038/s41598-025-24240-z.