Diana Ürge-Vorsatz - Biography#

Diana Ürge-Vorsatz is a Professor at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, and Director of the Center for Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Policy (3CSEP) at the Central European University (CEU). She was elected as Vice Chair of Working Group III (Mitigation) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2015. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California (Los Angeles and Berkeley). She served as the Acting Head of Department in 2002-2003 and directed the PhD program in 2003 – 2004. She was a Visiting Professor at the International Christian University of Tokyo and a Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Diana Ürge-Vorsatz was a Coordinating Lead Author in both the Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports (AR4 and AR5) of the IPCC, contributed to the Synthesis Report of AR5. She served on the United Nation’s Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change, and led the buildings-related work in the Global Energy Assessment. Beyond having published widely in scholarly journals and books, she is the associate editor of the Springer journal “Energy Efficiency”, and is a member of the Editorial Board of “Annual Reviews of Environment and Resources”. She has worked on and directed many international research projects for organisations including the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Global Environment Facility, United Nation’s Environment Programme, the World Energy Council, Climate Strategies, the World Bank. She has been serving on the Governing and Advisory boards of several organizations, including Innogy (RWE), the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund (KLIEN), the European Climate Foundation (ECF), and the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), and the NGO Clean Air Action Group (Chair). She is regularly invited to high-level review panels, such as for the Director’s Review of the Environmental Energy Technology Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; the High-level Panel to assess the research of the EU’s Joint Research Centre during FP7, and several panels in the European Research Council. She has delivered over 30 keynote speeches, appears regularly in the media related to energy and climate change issues. She received the Hungarian Republic’s Presidential Award “Medium Cross” in 2008, as well as the “Role Model” award in 2009.