Our Team

Michael Jungmeier

Head of ICEB, Management Comittee, UNESCO Chair
Michl is a human geographer and Professor in Nature Conservation and Sustainability. He worked in consulting of conservration areas and capacity building for more than 30 years.

Martin Schneider

Member of Management Comittee, Dean and Program Director of Nature Conservation Engineering, Head of CoNNa
Martin holds a professorship in Building Materials Technology and is head of team CoNNa.

Gernot Paulus

Member of Management Comittee, Head of SIENA, Professor in Geoinformation
Gernot is responsible for strategic project development involving the use of drones and satellites for environmental monitoring, spatial decision support systems, and spatial data science.

Sarah Fraueneder

Educational Officer (EdO)
Sarah Fraueneder supports the translation of research findings into engaging educational offerings and learning experiences. This includes developing seminar formats, summer schools, syllabi, and curricula. She also designs and oversees informal learning and reflection formats, as well as citizen science activities and Open Educational Resources (OER) in collaboration with the SCO.

Teja Muha

Project Development Officer (PDO)
Teja Muha supports project development in close collaboration with clients, partners, and stakeholders. She brings practicerelevant research questions, funding instruments, and expertise together through coherent research proposals and aids the team in finding the most suitable funding possibilities for their ideas. She also develops call-relevant, ready- to-use materials for the entire research center.

Ilja Svetnik

Science Communication Officer (SCO), Junior Researcher
Ilja Svetnik aids researchers in making their results visible and accessible to broader audiences. Ilja’s work enables the center’s research to enter public debates and societal decisionmaking with low entry barriers. He also manages public outreach, oversees school workshops, and develops workshop materials, OER, and outreach programs in collaboration with the EdO.

Gloria Bottaro

Innovation Officer (InnO)
Gloria Bottaro supports the journey from a strong idea, a workingsupports the journey from a strong idea, a working prototype, or a new business model to the market. She serves as a link to established companies as well as to start-ups in the CUAS Founders’ Garage. She is a point of contact for companies who want to engage in matters related to the research center.

Nina Nestler

Team Support Officer (TSO)
Nina Nestler provides administrative and technical support to the team. Under the motto “happy to help”, she is also a point of contact for external inquiries.

Team CoNNa

Stefan Breuer

Senior Researcher
Stefan focuses on research and dissemination concerning the paradigm shift in the construction sector for a systemic and practical alignment with the planetary boundaries.

Peter Harsányi

Senior Researcher
Peter oversees research projects in the fields of materials technology, reinforcement techniques, prototype development, and structural engineering.

Anna Hollerer

Junior Researcher
Anna works in the construction laboratory, where she oversees and coordinates projects that bring together biodiversity and construction.

Sandra Ofner

Senior Researcher
Sandra is involved in supervising student projects and theses and is responsible for the structural engineering aspects and developments in research projects.

Almuth Schindler-Künnert

Junior Researcher
Almuth works on different research projects, where her focus is on sustainability – specifically, the life-cycle-oriented optimization of product and process quality.

Evan Vincent

Junior Researcher
Evan is an alumnus of the MCA master’s program of CUAS and has a particular interest in helping small businesses align their practices with nature conservation.

Richard Woschitz

Endowed Professor of Timber Construction
Richard is CEO of Woschitz Group and operates as professor, committee, and project partner at CUAS and within CoNNa.

Team MCA

Vanessa Berger

Senior Researcher
Vanessa is an ecologist specialized in spatial and temporal analysis, mobile data collection, and vegetation ecology.

Daniel Dalton

Senior Researcher
Daniel is an expert in the field of integrated pest management of fruit and berry crops, focusing on insects.

Jessica Fuchs

Project Assistant
Jessica is a wildlife ecologist focusing on acoustic monitoring.

Julian Greiler

Project Assistant
Julian is a student at BOKU and supports projects with visitor monitoring within protected areas.

Franz Hölzl

Key researcher, Deputy head of team MCA
Franz‘s work covers areas from wildlife diseases, physiological adaptations of wild animals to human activities, and human-wildlife conflicts.

Sabrina Muscolino

Junior Researcher
Sabrina is an ecologist with a background in human-wildlife conflicts, specializing in data analysis and remote sensing applications.

Gerfried Pirker

Nature Conservation Engineer
Gerfried’s work focuses on technologies and agriculture. He is the main technician of the ICEB field research lab and its infrastructure.

Marta Polizzi

Junior Researcher
Marta’s interests lie at the intersection of spatial and temporal analysis, climate change, conservation ecology, animal behavior, and bioacoustics.

Lilia Schmalzl

Senior Researcher
Lilia is a geographer with a focus on visitor management in conservation areas and light pollution impacts on the environment.

Johanna Schulz

Junior Researcher
Johanna is a biologist with a focus on genetics, in particular the sampling, processing and analysis of environmental DNA.

Klaus Steinbauer

Senior Researcher
Klaus is a biologist with a focus on biodiversity research, long-term monitoring and mountain ecology.

Vid Švara

Key Researcher
Vid is a biologist with expertise in biodiversity research, genetic identification methods, and effects of environmental change on biota.

Chi Kim Tran

Senior Researcher
Chi brings approaches in social sciences, especially participatory and multimodal research with young people, to biodiversity and nature conservation research and education.

Elisabeth Wiegele

Senior Researcher, MCA Course Director
Elisabeth is a geographer and trained nature conservation engineer–her research focuses primarily on the management of conservation areas.

Polona Zakrajšek

Junior Researcher
Polona is a geographer and biologist. She works for the Permanent Secretariat of the World Heritage “Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe”

Team SIENA

Karl-Heinrich Anders

Researcher, Professor in Geoinformation
Karl is an expert in geoinformatics, spatio-temporal databases, GIS application development and surveying with a background and experience in applied spatial data science.

Adrijana Car

Researcher, Professor in Geoinformation
Adrijana has long-term expertise in Geographic Information Systems and Science with special focus on conceptual modelling and problem-based learning at national and international level.

Elisabeth Konrad

Junior Researcher
Elisabeth is an expert in applied geoinformatics development and software engineering with a interest in spatial data infrastructures.

Oleksii Liashenko

Junior Researcher
Oleksii is a specialist in IT infrastructure and IT security. He supports various web-based prototypes and test environments.

Marina Peturnig

Project Assistance
Marina is an expert in geoinformatics with expertise in design and performance of spatial data acquisition, management and quality assessment.

Stefan Ruess

Junior Researcher, PhD candidate
Stefan is an expert in multiscale remote sensing with a special focus on data acquisition, integration, and analysis in the field of vegetation phenology.

Mohammad Mustafa Sadoun

Junior Researcher
Mohammad has a background in applied geoinformatics and spatial data science. He is designing and implementing applied AI projects for automated species recognition and tracking applications.

Ulf Scherling

Senior Lab Engineer, Drone Pilot
Ulf has a background in IT system infrastructure and is responsible for performing drone missions and sensor operations in the context of environmental monitoring and infrastructure documentation.

Dariia Strelnikova

Senior Researcher, SIENA Team coordination
Dariia has a background in applied geoinformatics and linguistics. She designs and implements spatio-temporal models and systems for environmental monitoring and risk assessment of drone operations.