New Environmental Economics Professor Joins KTH
NEWS
Viveka Palm has been appointed adjunct professor of applied environmental economics and environmental statistics at the Royal Institute of Technology's Department of Urban Planning and Environment. Palm heads the Unit for Environmental Accounts and Natural Resources at Statistics Sweden (SCB), the administrative agency responsible for gathering, analysing and delivering statistical data to government and researchers.
“There is so much data that you can immerse yourself in. It’s fun to understand and communicate how things fit together, what the trends are and what’s behind them,” she says. As an adjunct professor, she hopes to be able to write, teach and collaborate more than in the past.
Viveka Palm earned her MSc in Engineering Physics at KTH in the 1980s. After working as an environmental consultant and researcher at the Swedish Environmental Research Institute IVL for eight years, she moved to her current post at SCB.
“The opportunity to work more closely with the social aspects of the environment attracted me to switch to Statistics Sweden,” she says. “Environmental researchers usually look at what has already happened to ask the question, ‘What should we do now?’ But I wanted to get involved in an earlier phase and find out what’s about to happen.
Some of the areas she would like to do research in the future include economic instruments such as taxes that affect natural resources, how to develop simplified accounting procedures for the chemicals sector, and accessibility issues in geographic information systems.
“Working at SCB gave me a lot of ideas about things I wanted to immerse myself in, and a professorship at KTH will give me the chance to develop some of these ideas,” Palm says.
For more information: Viveka Palm, +46-8-506 942 19
By Malin Picha
