Sibel Eker
Senior Research Scholar
Sustainable Service Systems Research Group
Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Biography
Sibel Eker is a senior research scholar in the Sustainable Service Systems Research Group of the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program. Her interdisciplinary research profile combines systems analysis and engineering, decision sciences, and social sciences. Her work brings a systems thinking and uncertainty focus to climate change and sustainability problems with model-based approaches. Complementing her academic experience, she has worked with several stakeholders and policy actors such as the UK Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, the World Bank, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)-Climate Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC), as well as other governmental and private organizations.
Her current research interests center around the drivers and implications of demand-side climate change mitigation, sustainable diets, and co-production of mitigation and sustainability scenarios through simple integrated assessment models, such as the FeliX model. Eker has had leading roles in related European research consortia, including the ongoing WorldTrans and CHOICE projects, and she is the PI of LOW-AI.
Eker is a selected member of the Global Young Academy where she co-leads the Scientific Excellence Working Group. She is also a Lead Author in the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7), as well as an editorial board member of Humanities and Social Sciences Communications and Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. She teaches system dynamics modeling at Nijmegen School of Management and as part of the European Master in System Dynamics.
Eker obtained her PhD degree in 2016, from Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, with a focus on dealing with uncertainties in the Dutch natural gas sector. Prior to joining IIASA in 2017, she worked at University College London on integrated decision making in housing, energy, and wellbeing; and at Delft University of Technology on the resilience of the transport network in Bangladesh.
Last update: 23 JAN 2024
Publications
Eker, S. , Wilson, C. , Höhne, N., McCaffrey, M.S., Monasterolo, I., Niamir, L. , & Zimm, C. (2024). Harnessing social tipping dynamics: A systems approach for accelerating decarbonization. One Earth 7 (6) 976-988. 10.1016/j.oneear.2024.05.012.
Lenton, T.M., Armstrong McKay, D.I., Loriani, S., Abrams, J.F., Lade, S.J., Donges, J.F., Milkoreit, M., Powell, T., Smith, S.R., Zimm, C. , Buxton, J.E., Bailey, E., Laybourn, L., Ghadiali, A., & Dyke, J.G. (2023). The Global Tipping Points Report 2023. University of Exeter , Exeter, UK.
Eker, S. , Reiter, C. , & Kuhn, M. (2023). Human wellbeing in relation to climate, economy and environment. In: Annual meeting of the Integrated Assessment Modelling Consortium, 14-17 November 2023, Venice, Italy.
Swamy, D. & Eker, S. (2023). Unraveling the Complexity of Urban Transport Behavior: A Qualitative Review of Factors Influencing Mode Choice in Developed and Developing Regions. In: Sixteenth IAMC Annual Meeting 2023, 14-16 November 2023.
Eker, S. , Wilson, C. , Hohne, N., McCaffrey, M., Monasterolo, I., Niamir, L. , & Zimm, C. (2023). A dynamic systems approach to harness the potential of social tipping. arXiv 10.48550/arXiv.2309.14964.