Biographies International Women’s Leadership Symposium
Mehjabeen Abidi-HabibMehjabeen is research scholar in human ecology at Government College University Lahore. Based in Pakistan, she has been a development practitioner specializing in community development and natural resource management for 20 years. She recently submitted a PhD on environmental management as well as researching a forthcoming book, 'Water in the Wilderness: People, Biodiversity and Wetlands in Pakistan’ with assistance from the Heinrich Boll Foundation.
With an early professional foundation rooted in field work with poor community in remote areas of Pakistan, Ms Abidi-Habib has then worked for the UN in Pakistan for the past seven years - most recently managing the Global Environment Facility's Small Grants Program in the province of Punjab. Before this, she worked for UNICEF as Program Officer for Women and Child Rights. In the early part of her career she has worked with the Aga Khan Rural Support Program, GTZ (The German Agency for Technical Cooperation) and the World Conservation Union (IUCN). Now she is preparing to enter the academic world and bring her practical experience to the research field in Pakistan.
She was appointed Chair of the Board of Directors of LEAD International in 2008 and is engaged in several other honorary trustee positions with local and regional organizations.
Ms Abidi Habib has a master's degree in Applied Plant Sciences from Imperial College London. She is the editor of 'Green Pioneers', published by the UN Development Program. The book is a compilation of 20 profiles of environment and development innovators in Pakistan. She is a LEAD Fellow.
Sarah Darby, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford
Sarah Darby researches social and behavioural aspects of energy use with the Lower Carbon Futures team at the ECI, with a particular interest in how people learn about energy management. She is part of the evaluation team for the UK Demand Reduction trials, and was a co-author of 40% House, a widely-debated study of the prospects for reducing carbon emissions from the UK housing stock. Sarah holds a BSc in Ecological Science from Edinburgh University and a doctorate from Oxford. She writes and speaks on energy in relation to user behaviour, information and advice programmes, technological developments and equity issues.
Catherine Mitchell is Professor of
Energy Policy at the University of Exeter and has worked on energy issues for 25 years. Catherine has advised the UK and international governments on a broad range of energy policy issues. She is Coordinating Lead Author of the Policy, Financing & Implementation Chapter of the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation; she is also a Lead Analyst for the Global Energy Assessment undertaken through the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). She is also PI of an ESRC/EPSRC interdisciplinary research cluster on Energy Security in a Multi-Polar World and is a co-director of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC).She has worked previously as an academic in the Centre for Management Under Regulation at the Warwick Business School, University of Warwick (2000-2007); the Energy Group of the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex (1990-2000); and the Energy and Resources Group, University of California, Berkeley (1999). Prior to that she was a journalist writing about oil and gas issues (1982-6).
Ana Brito e Melo initiated a carrier in the wave energy field, in 1993, when a Portugueseteam at the Instituto Superior Técnico (Technical University of Lisbon) decided to build awave energy pilot plant in the Azores, on the neighbouring island of where she was born.She concluded her initial research activities with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, withthe thesis entitled “Modelling and Design of Oscillating Water Column Devices:Application to the Wave Power Plant, at Pico, Azores”, 2000. 1 year of her research wasperformed at École Centrale de Nantes, France in 1998, giving a very important input toher training on hydrodynamics and numerical modelling.In 2002 she was invited to be Executive Secretary of the Implementing Agreement onOcean Energy Systems of the International Energy Agency (OES-IA) and since then hasbeen involved in the work done under this international collaborative program.In 2004 she integrated the team of the newly founded non-profit association – the WaveEnergy Centre (WavEC), in Lisbon – and since then she has been responsible for thecoordination work of R&D activities.She is further the representative from WavEC in the national technical committee (TC114) for the development of standards on Marine Energy.
Olive Heffernan, the Chief Editor of Nature Climate Change, a new research journal being launched in print in 2011 by the publishers of Nature. Prior to her new appointment, Olive was an online commissioning editor on climate change with Nature Publishing Group. During this time, she ran Nature’s Climate Feedback blog and contributed regularly to the magazine as a reporter, covering controversies such as Climategate as well as international policy negotiations. Olive graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a degree in Zoology and from University College Dublin with a PhD in marine ecology. She moved to the UK a post doctorate research scientist in 2004, and subsequently became a chartered marine scientist. She jumped ship from research to science journalism in 2006.
Dr Monika MacDevette is an environmental physiologist having studied the adaptive responses of plants to harsh and stressful environments, particularly low temperature and freezing stress. Monika obtained her BSc and MSc (Plant Biotechnology) from the University of Manitoba, and PhD (Crop Physiology) from the University of Saskatchewan before finally leaving the deep freeze of the Canadian prairies to undertake post-doctoral research at the University of British Columbia in genetic engineering. Her experience in research, and the application of physiology and developmental genetics to understanding how living things cope with environmental stresses, provides the basis for her interests into the impacts of environmental change on ecosystems and human well-being. Monika was recently the Deputy Director of the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre at Cambridge, UK. She is currently the Chief of the Capacity Development Branch in the Division of Early Warning and Assessment at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, focussing on environmental assessment capacity building and technology support.
Over the past 20 years, her work has taken her from Canada to South Africa, India and Kuwait where she has worked on programmes including: the transfer of genes coding for Antarctic fish anti-freeze proteins into plants; screening for low temperature stress tolerance in forestry production systems; managing the development of spatial information decision support systems in the fields of agriculture, biodiversity and coastal and marine development; assessing international research proposals on the human health impacts, and on groundwater contamination from the oil fires in Kuwait; coordinating multi-institutional environmental research partnerships; and serving on an international team to review the performance of a European biodiversity information institute. She established and operated a private technology management consulting company in Cape Town prior to working with UNEP since 2002.
Her professional interests include technology foresight, and fostering the integration of science with organizational dynamics to support informed environmental decision-making – how to get smart people in institutions and government to make good environmental decisions based on sound science.
Dr Mirjana Radovic-Markovic is a full professor of Entrepreneurship.
She holds B. Sc, M. Sc. and Ph.D Degrees in Economics, as well as Post Doctoral Studies in Multidisciplinary Studies. In addition, she holds the Honorary Doctorate of Science (D.Sc) awarded St. James the Elder Theological Seminary, Tennessee, US, 2010 and the Honorary Doctorate of Letters (D.Litt) awarded by Academy of Universal Global Peace, Chennai, India, 2010. The awarding committees cited Dr. Radović-Marković for having served the world community with outstanding research in Economics and Women’s Entrepreneurship.She has written twenty books and more than hundred peer Journal Articles. Professor `s new book is WOMEN IN BUSINESS: Theory, Practice and Flexible Approaches, published by Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd, 2009. London, UK.Professor Radovic is a founder and editor in chief of Peer Journal of Women’s Entrepreneurship and Education (JWE).
