I am a Group Leader (tenure track) at Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology.

Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Zurich, ETH Zurich, and Harvard University, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. I completed my doctorate at ETH Zurich with a dissertation in environmental psychology. 

I am interested in how behavioral responses can help mitigate and adapt to climate change — one of the greatest challenges of our time. 

My research in environmental psychology focuses on the determinants of individual and collective action on climate change. Specifically, I have looked at how trust in climate scientists, knowledge, and technology-related attitudes influence action on climate change. I am particularly interested in the role that experts, such as climate scientists, play in influencing climate-friendly behaviors as well as how scientists' own behavior (e.g., engagement in advocacy) influences their credibility. 

I was the main lead of the TISP Many Labs study together with my colleague Niels G. Mede. TISP is a consortium of 241 researchers at 179 institutions that assesses current levels of trust in scientists and climate change-related attitudes across 68 countries on all inhabited continents.

More specifically, I use quantitative methods to answer the following questions:

• How can we spark individual and collective action on climate change and what structural changes are needed to foster such behavioral responses?

• How does trust in climate scientists relate to people's emotional and behavioral responses to climate change?

• What are the determinants of trust in scientists and public perceptions of scientists' role in policymaking?

• How does scientists' policy advocacy influence their credibility?

• How does experience of extreme weather events influence climate change attitudes?

I believe that answering these questions requires interdisciplinary collaborations, which is why I am currently collaborating with historians and philosophers of science, computational social scientists, science communication scholars, and climate scientists.