Four new doctoral students join PLUS
In May 2021, four new doctoral students started at PLUS. Below, each one of them is briefly introduced as well as the projects they will be working on.
Constance Brouillet
Constance Brouillet is originally from France and recently obtained her master’s degree in Environmental Sciences and Engineering at EPFL. She joined PLUS in March 2019 for her master thesis and continued working as a research assistant for a few months. Her PhD is part of Future Cities Lab Global project in Antananarivo, which examines the possibility of designing and achieving resilient and sustainable flood-prone urbanized landscapes. During her PhD, she will use serious games and agent-based models to explore the transformation pathways of the capital of Madagascar. She focuses on ecosystem services and green and blue infrastructures.
Nivedita Varma Harisena
Hailing from India, Nivedita has a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Kerala University. Inspired to use spatial analytics to solve problems of a larger scale, she pursued master’s in Environmental-Planning from SPA, New Delhi along with a second Masters in Geoinformation and Earth-Observation from ITC, University of Twente, The Netherlands. Nivedita has further worked professionally in assessing the environmental impact of corporates on global biodiversity. At PLUS, she will be working on modelling habitat networks as part of the EMPHASES project with an aim to understand the historic complex dynamics of socio-ecological systems in the Swiss plateau.
Yves Marc Räth
After an apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory assistant at EMPA, Yves Marc Räth worked at an environmental laboratory. Changing his career path, he decided to do his bachelor's in Geography at the University of Zurich. Yves got his master's in Spatial Development and Infrastructure Systems at ETH with a focus on transport planning. Before returning to ETH, he worked at a consultancy as a research associate. Yves joined PLUS to do his doctorate within the scope of the EMPHASES project. His contribution will be the construction and analysis of the settlement network in Switzerland over the past 150 years.
Matteo Riva
Matteo Riva has completed his bachelor and master studies in geography at the UZH, with a special interest in geovisualization and GIS. After finishing his studies, he decided to expand his didactical skills by obtaining a teaching diploma. He then worked for almost two years at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL. At PLUS, he will undertake his PhD within the Future Cities Laboratory project, in which he will assess the agricultural and urban landscape in the Zürich area by generating typologies of ecosystem services and their trajectories to derive management and policy recommendations.
