Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Gregory Norris

MIT

Gregory Norris directs SHINE (the Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise) at MIT, where he advances and applies methods for creating handprints, which are positive sustainability impacts outside the scope of the actor’s footprint. He has also taught Life Cycle Assessment (and handprinting) at Harvard for the past 25 years. Norris is Vice President for Life Cycle Sustainability at the Green Building Alliance, where he helps small and medium enterprises and communities to reduce their footprints and create handprints. Norris co-founded and is Director of Science at Earthster.org, a web-based platform democratizing LCA. He is a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute, which seeks to build a scientific understanding of the mind to reduce suffering and promote well-being. In 2012 Time Magazine named his work on Handprints as one of “10 ideas that are changing your life.” He served as Chief Scientist with the International Living Future Institute, where he helped design, launch and advance the Living Product Challenge. In 1996 he founded Sylvatica which applied and advanced LCA methods and tools through 2010. He founded the non-profit New Earth in 2003 to promote collaboration between industry and civil society on community-driven sustainable development. Norris served as a member of the Royal Government of Bhutan’s International Expert Working Group, comprised of 60 experts from around the world commissioned to draft a new global development paradigm during 2013-2014 to promote human flourishing as a global goal through pragmatic international public policies.

Marzia Traverso

RWTH Aachen University

Holding the position of Full Professor and Director at RWTH Aachen University since 2017, Marzia Traverso lead the Institute for Sustainability in Construction. Since April 2021, she has been serving as a project manager and convener for the development of ISO 14075 on Social Life Cycle Assessment. She is membership in the Technical Advisory Board for Ecological Footprint, and has experience encompasses significant roles such as Engineer and Sustainability Assessment Expert at BMW Group, as well as PostDoc Research Associate at the Technical University of Berlin. She authored and co-authored over 90 scientific articles in esteemed journals and also contribute to the academic community as an editorial board member for leading publications focusing on sustainability and waste management.

Bernard Mazijn

By training Bernard Mazijn is an Agricultural Engineer (specialisation: hydrobiology). Subsequently, he also obtained a certificate as Engineer in Environmental Sanitation. Some years later, he successfully completed the Advanced Additional Studies ‘Development Cooperation’ (specialisation: Economics).

His career developed along two lines. The past 30 years, he was employed in the academic world (research and education), but he was also involved in decision-making at various levels (from local to international). Sustainable development was the field of work, often with a focus on the environmental dimension.

During that period, he gained experience in managing a multi-disciplinary team or project, and – sometimes under difficult circumstances – to achieve the formulated objectives within the set timing and budget. Regularly, he was chairperson of meetings, project manager, process counsellor, representative or negotiator on behalf of the European Union, Belgium, a Member of the Government, a Department, the university, etc.

Together with Catherine Benoit, he was at the time editor of the first set of Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products (2009). Today he is for more than 25 years visiting professor ‘Sustainable Development’ at Ghent University (Belgium). Since October 2020 he is the Chief of Staff of the federal minister for Climat, Environment, Sustainable Development and Green Deal (Belgium).

Manuela D’Eusanio

Assistant Professor/ Università degli Studi ‘G.d’Annunzio’ Chieti-Pescara

Manuela D’Eusanio is Assistant Professor of Commodity Science, teaching “Social Sustainability Models and Methods” and “Customs Commodity Science” within the Department of Economic Studies (DEc) at the University “G. d’Annunzio”, Pescara, Italy. Her research focuses on the assessment of social and environmental sustainability using life cycle approaches (i.e., S-LCA, SO-LCA, LCA), particularly within the agri-food sector, and their connection with other sustainability approaches, Supply Chain Management, and Digital Technologies. Since 2015, she has been working on S-LCA, when she pursued her MSc in Business Administration with a thesis on the implementation of S-LCA within the beekeeping sector. In 2020, she pursued her Ph.D. in “Business, Institution, Markets” defending the thesis on Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (SO-LCA) as a methodological proposal to assess the social sustainability. She was a Contributing Author of the Guidelines for Social LCA (UNEP 2020) and she was one of the Authors of the Methodological Sheets (UNEP 2021). Additionally, she worked on their official translation into Italian and supervised one of the Pilot projects, published in 2022. She is currently involved in the international project ANALYST, funded by Horizon2020, which aims to develop an integrated impact assessment approach within the Safe and Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) framework for chemical and material substances.

Malaquias Zildo António Tsambe

Social LCA in developing countries: state of the art and ways forward

Malaquias Zildo António Tsambe is Assistant Professor at Department of Studies in Environmental Technologies at Pedagogical University of Maputo, Mozambique. Hi was a Postdoctoral fellow at CHEPIS Post-Doctoral Programme hosted by KTH – Sweden and UWC – South Africa and has a Ph.D in Environmental Sanitation and Water Resources. His main research areas of interest are environmental education, life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) and hihigher education & sustainability. Currently, is developing research on “Higher Education and Sustainability”, with a focus on how higher education institutions contribute to materialize the 2030 Agenda (policies, practices and engagements).

Ayse Nur Ozturk

Compliance & Quality Assurance Expert/ EPD

Ayse Nur Ozturk is a mining/mineral processing engineer with nearly three years of on-site gold and copper processing expertise and a master’s degree in Sustainable and Innovative Natural Resource Management. Currently working as a Compliance and Quality Assurance Expert at EPD International, focusing on the verification process of EPDs and leading continuous improvement projects to improve quality. Concurrently, contributing as a Researcher at the Swedish Environmental Research Institute (IVL), participating in diverse projects focused on Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), Techno-Economic Assessment (TEA), and business development in mainly raw materials industries. Previous roles include Process Engineer at SSR Mining, where accomplishments include designing and constructing a Gold Slag Enrichment Facility. Skilled in project management, and entrepreneurship, as evidenced by her success in start-ups within the EIT Jumpstarter competition in 2022, with a focus on metals extraction.

gher education & sustainability. Currently, is developing research on “Higher Education and Sustainability”, with a focus on how higher education institutions contribute to materialize the 2030 Agenda (policies, practices and engagements).

Ivânia Ramos dos Santos

Advisor – Head of the Projects Directorate at SEMIPI

Her purpose is to support the acceleration of public and private organizations by preparing their teams to achieve their best results.

With over 15 years of experience, she supports teams in scaling through guidelines on Quality, Innovation, Technology, and Information Security, aligned with process-based Management.

She stands out for aligning her scientific foundation with market application, developing agile and lean methodologies tailored to organizational needs.

Master’s degree in Production Engineering and Systems, with an emphasis on Requirements Engineering, process management, and innovation. Specialist in software engineering, bachelor’s degree in Information Systems. Official implementer of Quality and Innovation models (MPS.Br SV and SW, ISO, ITIL, BABOK, PMBOK, CMMI), with more than 10 certifications in the field.