Dr. Aster Gebrekirstos has been awarded the 2016 Eleonore Trefftz Visiting Women Professorship at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences in recognition of her outstanding research and contributions. The programme is a component of TU Dresden's Institutional Strategy "The Synergetic University” funded by the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal and State Governments. It provides an opportunity for leading women researchers to stay and work for one or two semesters to further develop their research and network.

Under the Eleonore Trefftz Programme, Dr. Aster Gebrekirstos will be researching and lecturing at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences. The Ethiopian visiting professor will hold guest lectures at the Centre for International Postgraduate Studies of Environmental Management (CIPSEM) and the international programme in Tropical Forestry. She will also discuss ideas for joint research projects with colleagues in the Department of Forest Sciences during her three weeks stay at Tharandt campus in 2016 and for another period in 2017. Dr. Gebrekirstos is a scientist and head of the Dendrochronology laboratory at the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya. Her research area focuses on tropical forest ecology and management, which includes dendrochronology (to reconstruct past climates and effects and consequences of global climate change on biodiversity and livelihood), plant water relations, agroforestry and restoration of degraded landscapes. She is leading and involved in many research projects in Africa and Asia. Among other projects, she is highly involved in the USAID-funded “Africa RISING” project aiming at the transformation of agricultural systems through sustainable intensification in Ethiopian highlands. In recognition of her excellent research and contributions, Dr Gebrekirstos has received several awards, notably, the esteemed “African Climate Award for excellence in research in climate change adaptation and mitigation” in 2014. She also received the 2009 “Special Award for Ground Breaking Science” in 2009.

Dr. Gebrekirstos holds a BSc and MSc in Forestry from the Alemaya University in Ethiopia and Wageningen University in the Netherlands, respectively. She got her PhD from Georg-August-Universität Göttingen with a thesis entitled  “Stable carbon isotopes and plant water relations in the Acacia savanna woodlands of Ethiopia: implications for reforestation and paleoclimatic reconstructions”.

The Eleonore Trefftz Programme allows women academics to visit faculties for one or two semesters to represent their subject in the fields of teaching and research. The aim is that awardees serve as role models for women researchers where women professors are traditionally under represented and also attract world-leading researchers to support TUD’s internationalisation initiative. Hence, the visit of Dr. Gebrekirstos will contribute to that and particular importance is to intensify cooperation between working groups at TUD and the globally operating research and transfer organization, the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF),  a CGIAR Consortium Research Centre.

Contact
Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Feger
Faculty of Environmental Sciences
Phone: +49 351 463-31277
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