People

Our team of economists

Dr Tim Capon

Research Scientist, Agricultural and Environmental Economist

  • Tim Capon is an agricultural and environmental economist who researches decision-making and market behaviour under conditions of risk and uncertainty to inform policy evaluation and development. Tim's research draws on theories from economics and psychology to promote more sustainable agricultural and environmental outcomes. Applications include work on economic resilience and real options analysis, climate change adaptation, environmental markets and natural resource management, and plant and animal biosecurity.

Dr Sabrina Chakori

Postdoctoral Fellow, Ecological Economist

  • Sabrina holds a BSc. in Biology (University of Geneva, Switzerland) and a MSc. in Environmental Economics (The University of Queensland, Australia). Her interdisciplinary Ph.D. research (The University of Queensland, Australia) analysed the drivers of packaged food. The results of her work showed the need to implement degrowth strategies in order to improve the sustainability of food systems. Sabrina is a passionate systems modeler (systems thinking, system dynamics, network analysis), she believes that systems approaches are crucial to understanding and tackling current socio-ecological wicked problems. She is the co-founder of the Degrowth Journal, she is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and, in 2021, she has been selected as Post Growth Institute fellow. Winner of the 2020 Create Change: 7 News Young Achiever Award (QLD) and recipient of the Emerging Female Leader bursary from the National Council of Women of Queensland (2020), Sabrina is a multi-award social entrepreneur, researcher and educator. In her current CSIRO’s research, called Navigating the Sustainability Transitions and Innovation Dynamics, Sabrina focuses on the complex social-economic-ecological interaction that can influence the short and long-term success of a socially just and ecologically sustainable transition in Australia.

Dr Anthea Coggan

Research Scientist

  • Dr Anthea Coggan is an environmental/institutional economist in CSIRO Land and Water. Anthea's research focuses on the design and analysis of market based instruments to bring about improved land management on private land. Anthea has extensive experience understanding the design intricacies of conservation auctions and biodiversity offsets and is an expert at understanding the extent, drivers and distribution of transaction costs in environmental policy development and implementation.

Dr David Fleming

Senior Research Economist

  • David is an applied economist with work experience in Chile, the United States, New Zealand and Australia. Most of his work has been published in different economics and multidisciplinary journals. He is currently the co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Resources Policy, the most important international journal of minerals policy and economics.

Dr Russell Gorddard

Research Scientist

  • Russell Gorddard is an agricultural and natural resource economist by training with research interests in sustainability, adaptation to global change and the relationship between knowledge, values and rules in framing the decision context for adaptation planning and action. Russell is based in CSIRO Land and Water in Canberra and has a strong research interest in emerging systems of transactions and exchange in social-economic systems and their implications for adaptation to change.

Dr Shokhrukh Jalilov

Senior Research Scientist

  • Dr. Jalilov is a Senior Research Scientist – Economist in CSIRO Land & Water. His recent research has examined principles and provided empirical evidence for ways to achieve Pareto improving outcomes over shared transboundary waters in which riparian countries could be made better off by sharing the benefits of water infrastructure development and allocation. His work takes as its conceptual starting point the interconnections and cross-sectoral management of water, food and energy, and their related security dimensions (Water-Energy-Food Security Nexus). He has made additional contributions in economic evaluation of water quality in urban context of the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. Currently, Dr. Jalilov is conducting river basin assessments that integrate hydrologic, agronomic, institutional, and economic linkages to support sustainable river basin management and policy analysis in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Dr Shuang Liu

Research Scientist

Dr Yingying Lu

Research Technician

  • Dr. Yingying Lu joined CSIRO in October 2017. She got her PhD in economics from Australian National University in 2013. Yingying's work has been focusing on economic modelling and policy analysis. In particular, her research interests include computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling, input-output analysis, model-based energy and climate policy analysis. Since she joined CSIRO, Yingying has also been improving, developing and applying the GTEM-C model to address material use, climate change, environmental impact and sustainable future. She is also the section editor of Open Economics.

Dr Raymundo Marcos-Martinez

Senior Research Scientist

  • Ray is an expert on agricultural and land use economics with more than 15 years of experience working in projects in Mexico, Australia, China and the U.S.A. He combines state-of-the-art economics and spatial data science methods to analyse policy-relevant issues related to the sustainable management of natural resources in rural and urban areas, and from local to global scales. As part of the Sustainable Consumption and Production team his research contributes to providing scientific information to support policy and decision makers in decoupling resource needs from economic growth, societal progress, and sustainability. His work has been published in top, policy-oriented scientific journals such as Forest Policy and Economics, Land Use Policy, Energy Policy, Marine Policy, Environmental Science and Policy, and Ecosystem Services. Ray is actively engaged in the delivery of research, reports, and industry insights to Australian Federal and State Governments, international ONGs, and industry partners.

Dr Walter Okelo

Research Scientist

  • Walter is a research scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIRO) and his current research involves quantifying economic impact of biosecurity risks at the the human-animal-environment interface. Also, Walter currently leads an interdisciplinary project focussing on sustainable management of antimicrobial resistance in Fiji among other projects. Walter’s research interests include biosecurity economics, resource economics, disaster risk management, One Health, and techno-economics. Walter holds a PhD in economics from University of Edinburgh and post graduate certificates in applied econometrics and epidemiology (from Utrecht University) and health economics (from the World Bank). Walter is a veterinarian by background and has over six years’ experience in designing and evaluating biosecurity projects in Asia, Africa, Australia and the Pacific region.

Dr Sean Pascoe

Team Leader, Economist

  • Dr Pasco is a Fisheries Economist for the Environment Business Unit. Much of his research experience has involved the development of bioeconomic models for a range of fisheries around the world. He has also worked extensively in the area of capacity and efficiency analysis in fisheries. He has also undertaken extensive work on fisheries management policies, and has worked with the European Commission, OECD and FAO on the development of management policies and guidelines.

Dr Lavinia Poruschi

Research Scientist, Energy Transitions Economist

  • Lavinia is an economist and econometric modeller in Land & Water working on energy transitions research using regional and spatial data analysis to support strategic decisions. Her areas of focus include the regional development and regional prosperity implications of energy/primary industries (e.g. employment, regional product analysis); metrics and indicators for tracking success across policies implementation; strategic foresighting and scenarios projections development; consumer level analysis of energy use, access to renewables and energy inequity analysis. In addition to econometrics, she has a background in spatial (GIS) analysis and programming. She is a reviewer for journals including Energy Economics; Environmental Science and Policy; Resources Policy and others; and a member of the Economic Society of Australia.

Dr Gabriela Scheufele

Principal Research Scientist, Environmental and Natural Resource Economist

  • Dr Gabriela Scheufele is an environmental and natural resource economist at CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere in the Marine Resource Economics Team. Gabriela is passionate about linking economics with science to improve the efficiency of natural resource allocations. She has substantial experience in the development and application of non-market valuation, econometric modelling, conservation auctions, payment for environmental services schemes, and social cost-benefit analysis. Gabriela is dedicated to support effective communication and collaboration between economists, scientists and policy-makers.

Dr Greg Smith

Postdoctoral Fellow, Environmental Economist

  • Greg is an environmental economist with CSIRO Land and Water based in Hobart. Greg’s research specialises in integrated environment-economy modelling with expertise in the optimal design of ecosystem service schemes, identifying economically optimal spatial patterns of land use and the valuation of ecosystem services. Greg’s research covers a variety of domains including agriculture, forestry, climate change, outdoor recreation, renewable energy and catchment management. He has worked on web-based applications that provide information for government, businesses and communities in quantifying the benefits and value of land use and land management decisions. Greg is currently working on a project assessing opportunities and risks to the Australian forestry industry with a focus on natural capital accounting.

Dr Sorada Tapsuwan

Principal Research Scientist, Environmental and Natural Resource Economist

  • Sorada is an expert in non-market valuation and has valued environmental assets using a variety of techniques, including contingent valuation, choice modelling, travel cost and hedonic property price (HPP) methods, across a wide area of research domains, such as marine park management, urban water demand and supply management, rural and irrigation water management, transportation, land use management, technology adoption, biosecurity management and climate change. Follow Sorada on Twitter @STapsuwan.

Dr Stuart Whitten

Senior Principal Research Scientist

  • Dr Whitten is the senior economist with CSIRO Land and Water. He currently leads a portfolio of research designing environmental markets and assessing the value of natural capital. Previously he worked on the design, delivery and evaluation of a wide range of environmental markets including the Australian Government’s Environmental Stewardship Program and Reef Trust Tender, offset programs in Queensland and NSW, and with NRM groups on incentive and payment approaches to biodiversity conservation. He has previously worked on the economics a diverse array of issues including Great Barrier Reef water quality, natural capital and agricultural productivity, and recently, the economics of Queensland Fruit Fly in major production areas across Victoria and South Australia. He is a member of the Great Barrier Reef 2050 Plan Independent Expert Panel and previously the Queensland Government Water Science Taskforce and has provided expert input to governments, NRM and not-for-profit organisations, and the private sector on the economics of biodiversity and natural capital.

Dr Russ Wise

Principal Research Scientist

  • Russ Wise is a sustainability economist passionate about working with people to help understand the challenges caused by rapid technological and environmental change and economic development and to develop approaches that enable learning and decision making under uncertainty. Russ’s research includes further developing economic theory and analytical approaches to help structure adaptation problems and inform the evaluation of trade-offs in resource allocations under uncertainty, exploring how concepts such as adaptation pathways can be used to build shared understanding of complex problems and generate responses over time, and developing ways to support individuals and agencies learn and adapt through 'smart failures' that build confidence and capacity to make decisions under risk and uncertainty.

Dr Stefanos Xenarios

Principal Research Scientist

  • Stefanos is an environmental economist by training with a focus on water resources and climate change aspects. He initially acquired a 3-years of postdoctoral experience in India and Ethiopia as a staff member of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). Subsequently, Stefanos did research on climate change and agriculture in South Asia, based at the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy (NIBIO), and worked as Head of the Water and Energy Security Unit at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Office in Tajikistan. He further became a Senior Researcher in the University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan leading activities on water-energy-food and environment nexus in the region while in May 2018 he was appointed as Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Public Policy in Nazarbayev University based in Kazakhstan. Since January 2020 he has been an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Water Policy, at the National University of Singapore. From January 2023 he has become Principal Research Scientist in CSIRO, based in Canberra, Australia. He is in the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Water Resources Development, Hydrology Research Journal, World Development Sustainability, and the Central Asian Journal of Water Research, while he is in the Management Board of the International Water Association’s Specialist Group on Statistics and Economics.