Andrea Castelletti Italian winner of the Frontiers Planet Prize

Rewarding breakthrough research in the field of sustainability science

Professor Andrea Castelletti, Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at the Politecnico di Milano, is the winner for Italy of the first edition of the Frontiers Planet Prize, created to reward breakthrough research published in the last two years in the field of sustainability science.

The prize was presented to Prof. Castelletti during the Frontiers Forum in Montreux, Switzerland, an event that brings together the different players in science, politics and civil society capable of contributing to the research and implementation of solutions to today's most pressing challenges.

Professor Castelletti was awarded the prize for his research published in Nature Climate Change entitled 'Unintended consequences of climate change mitigation for African river basins'. The study provides an in-depth analysis of the local dynamics at work in the Zambezi River area (southern Africa) to highlight the negative local side effects of emerging climate change mitigation policies, significantly increasing the risk of failure for all operators in the interconnected water-energy-food systems. The research thus emphasises the attention that needs to be paid to local dynamics when designing global climate change mitigation policies in order to improve the exploration of the full range of possible future scenarios and to support policy makers in adopting sustainable and effective strategies.

Andrea Castelletti is a lecturer in Natural Resources Management at the Politecnico di Milano and head of the Environmental Intelligence for Global change lab, set up to promote the advancement of analysis methods to support environmental policy decisions through an approach that combines environment, climate and hydrology with techniques including machine learning, optimal control and evolutionary computation.

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The award-winning research