Katherine von Stackelberg

Dr. Katherine von Stackelberg is a Principal at NEK Associates LTD focused on developing risk-based modeling tools and supporting socioecological systems decision-making. Her thirty years as an ecological and human health risk assessor has seen an evolution from piecemeal strategies for managing environmental stressors to integrated approaches for managing natural systems to better support human and ecological well-being. She is currently working with an international team of scientists to combine remote sensing and earth observation data with machine-learning and ground-based data sets to develop predictive models of ecosystem services to link with natural capital markets. That effort provided her the opportunity to attend COP15 as Party to the deliberations. She is also a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she is Director of Research Translation for a Superfund Research Center (MEMCARE – Metals and Metal Mixtures, Cognitive Aging, Remediation and Exposure Sources) and is a research affiliate at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA). She is also co-leader of the Biogeochemistry of Global Contaminants Group (BGC) at Harvard University. She has published on ecological resilience, the use of uncertainty analysis in decision making, bioaccumulation modeling, and use of decision analytic approaches to integrate ecosystem services and risk assessment for more effective decision making. Dr. von Stackelberg served on the Board of Scientific Counselors at the U.S. EPA for six years and was Chair for the last three. She led the effort to explore the use of decision analytic tools and methods to support environmental decision making within the U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development. She is a member of the Scientific Advisors on Risk Assessment for the European Commission in Brussels and recently completed service on a National Academies of Science Committee on Interventions to Increase the Resilience of Coral Reefs. She teaches a course on socio-ecological systems and sustainability that uses systems analysis to explore transformative and regenerative futures. Dr. von Stackelberg received an A.B. cum laude from Harvard College, and a Sc.M. and Sc.D. from the Harvard School of Public Health in Environmental Science and Risk Management. She is also the co-owner of a permaculture orchard, Echodale Farm LLC, in northern Vermont.

• Remediation, Restoration and Reclamation
• Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances
• Chemical Management
• Water
• Combined Exposure
• Sediment
• New Approach Methodologies
• Omics
• POPs and PBTs
• Wildlife
• Ecosystem Services
• Ecological Risk Assessment
• Soil
• Adverse Outcome Pathways
• Cross Species Extrapolation

• North Atlantic Regional Chapter - Professionals, 3 years