Florian Gollnow

Florian Gollnow is a Data Scientist at SEI Headquarters – Trase Team,  – Global Agendas, Climate and Systems Division.

Within Trase, Florian develops methods to assess the impact of agricultural commodities across the globe and leads Trase’s component on corporate sustainability efforts such as zero-deforestation commitments. In his research he is particularly interested in the socio-ecological outcomes of environmental policies, affecting e.g., forest conservation, sustainable development, and livelihoods.

Before joining SEI, he investigated the role of zero-deforestation supply chain commitments in the Brazilian soy sector in reducing soy-driven deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado biome. In Brazil, he has also worked on soy expansion’s socio-ecological outcomes, the impacts of environmental policies on forest degradation, and land use displacement processes. Other works focused on sustainable intensification potential and forest degradation in the country of Georgia, cocoa expansion in Ghana and Nigeria, and urban development in Abuja, Nigeria. His work usually involves econometric or statistical analysis of large spatial and temporal datasets using R, Google Earth Engine, and GIS applications.

Florian holds a Ph.D. in Geography from Humboldt-University of Berlin (Ph.D., 2018). Before joining Trase, Florian worked at the University of Maryland (2018-2020), Boston University (2020-2022), ETH Zurich (2022), and the University of Cambridge (2022-2023).