Associate Professor, Knowledge Integration Program
School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability
Cross-appointments:
- Geography and Environmental Management
- School of Environment, Enterprise and Development
- Systems Design Engineering
Faculty, Balsillie School of International Affairs
Member, Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation
Member, Waterloo Climate Institute
Fellow, Cascade Institute, Royal Roads University
Contact information:
Phone: 519-888-4567, ext. 45106
Office: Environment 1 (EV1), room 208
Email: vanessa.schweizer@uwaterloo.ca
Degrees:
- PhD Engineering and Public policy, Carnegie Mellon University, 2010
- Masters Environmental Studies, The Evergreen State College, 2007
- BSc (H) Physics (minors in Mathematics, Philosophy, Speech Communication), University of Nevada, USA, 2001
Research interests:
Collective decision-making. This includes many processes such as articulating aspirations and values, exercising foresight, confronting uncertainties and risks, and negotiating tradeoffs.
Active research projects:
- Long-term technology planning with adaptive policy pathway mapping for direct air capture in Canada
- Systematic approaches to scenario design for large-scale environmental change
- Path dependencies and discontinuities in social and technological change
- Interdisciplinary knowledge integration for environmental problems, especially climate change
Key publications:
- Motlaghzadeh, K., Schweizer, V. (2026) The future of direct air capture in Canada: A systematic scenario-based exploration of barriers and possibilities. Energy Research & Social Science 134, 104640.
- Lazurko, A., Schweizer, V., Armitage, D. (2023) Exploring “big picture” scenarios for resilience in social–ecological systems: transdisciplinary cross-impact balances modeling in the Red River Basin. Sustainability Science, 18, 1773-1794.
- Schweizer, V.J., Ebi, K.L., Vuuren, D.P. van, Jacoby, H.D., Riahi, K., Strefler, J., Takahashi, K., Ruijven, B.J. van, Weyant, J.P. (2020) Integrated Climate-Change Assessment Scenarios and Carbon Dioxide Removal. One Earth 3, 166–172.
- Schweizer, V.J. (2020) Reflections on cross-impact balances, a systematic method constructing global socio-technical scenarios for climate change research. Climatic Change 162, 1705-1722. Invited editorial essay for a Special Issue on “Integrated Scenario Building in Energy Transition Research.
- Schweizer, V.J. and Kurniawan, J.H. (2016) Systematically linking qualitative elements of scenarios across levels, scales, and sectors. In press with Environmental Modelling & Software, doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2015.12.014
- Lloyd, E.A. and Schweizer,V.J. (2014) Objectivity and a comparison of methodological scenario approaches for climate change research. Synthese, 191, 2049-2088.
- Schweizer, V.J. and O’Neill B.C. (2014) Systematic construction of global socioeconomic pathways using internally consistent element combinations. Climatic Change, 122, 431-445 for the Special Issue on "A Framework for the Development of New Socioeconomic Scenarios for Climate Change Research."
- Schweizer, V.J. and Kriegler, E. (2012) Improving environmental change research with systematic techniques for qualitative scenarios. Environmental Research Letters, 7, 044011.
Selected honours / awards:
- Review Editor to Ch. 3 (Projected Futures in the Context of Sustainable Development and Climate Change) of the Contribution of Working Group III (Mitigation) to the Seventh Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- Alumni of the Global Young Academy (Member 2019-24)
- Elected to the Council of the Society for Risk Analysis (2018-21)
- Paper with E.A. Lloyd recognized by the Editor-in-Chief of Synthese for being one of the top 10 downloaded papers of 2014 and most influential sustainability papers of 2014-15
- Contributing author to Ch. 21 (Regional Context) of the contribution of Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- Paper with E. Kriegler selected for the "Highlights of 2012" collection of Environmental Research Letters
- Doctoral fellowships from the Link Foundation (Energy Fellow, 2008-2010) and The Henry Luce Foundation (Clare Boothe Luce Fellow, 2005-2007)
Courses taught:
(present and last five years only)
- INTEG 121: Collaboration, Design Thinking, and Problem Solving (2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021)
- INTEG 251: Creative Thinking (2026)
- INTEG 420 A/B: Senior Honours Project (2026-27, 2024-25, 2021)
- ENVS 195: Introduction to Environmental Studies (2026)
- ENVS 178: Environmental Applications of Data Management and Statistics (2024)
- INTEG 475: Special Topics in Knowledge Integration (2024)
- GEOG 474: Special Topics in Geography (2024)
- ENBUS 403 A/B: Sustainable Entrepreneurship Project (2023-24)
- INTEG 499: Independent Studies
- INTEG 499 A/B : Independent Group Project A /B (2023-24)
- INTEG 441/641: Hard Decisions and Wicked Problems (2022, 2023)
- INDEV 212: Problem-Solving for Development (2022, 2021)