Michael Miess is currently employed as Research Scientist at the Systems Science Lab at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia), while he is on leave from the Environment Agency Austria (Umweltbundesamt). Michael’s research focuses on formal modelling of coupled biophysical-economic human-natural systems, as well as on the social, political, economic, and financial conditions for the transformation to a sustainable and climate-friendly economic system.

Michael has co-developed and coordinated national and European energy-environment macroeconomic modeling projects both in academic and policy consulting contexts, and he has worked in the construction and model-based evaluation of the national Austrian economic emission and energy scenarios. He has authored a chapter on climate-friendly monetary and financial structures for a Special Report by the Austrian Panel of Climate Change (APCC), and he is currently involved as Lead Author in the 2^nd Austrian Assessment Report (AAR2) on climate change.

A more recent stream of Michael’s work relates to theory building and modelling of a “Modern economics of human-mind-nature connection”, outlining the cultural, political and mindset shifts necessary to reach sustainable global socio-economic development trajectories. To this end, Michael and his co-authors are working on the transdisciplinary integration of economics with ecology, earth sciences, anthropology, psychology, (neuro-)biology, critical theory, cultural studies, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) systems.