Dr Susette Biber-Klemm is a senior research fellow at the WTI. She joined the NCCR’s IP9 as alternate leader in March 2007. Before joining the NCCR, she led the five-year project on Rights to Plant Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge (sponsored by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)) together with Thomas Cottier, and was managing editor of the book presenting its results (see http://wti.nccr-trade.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=588&Itemid=317 and http://www.cabi.org/bk_BookDisplay.asp?SubjectArea=&Subject=&PID=1911 ). On completion of this project she spent six months in Kyrgyzstan, investigating legal and institutional conditions for pasture management for the NCCR North–South.

Susette has a law degree and a PhD from Basel University, and a Master in Applied Ethics from the universities of Zürich, Münster, Utrecht and Padua. Her research interests include the international and national legal framework for the utilization of natural resources; her research takes an interdisciplinary approach (e.g. projects within the Swiss Priority Programme Environment, and the Foundation Man-Society-Environment, Basel).

Besides her work for the WTI, Susette teaches international and national environmental and biodiversity law at the University of Basel and at the Swiss Federal Technical Institute, Zürich. These activities have given her invaluable theoretical and practical experience in inter- and transdisciplinary work, both in research and teaching.

Susette is also a consultant for questions on the Convention on Biological Diversity (Access and Benefit Sharing) with the Swiss Academy of Sciences, a member of the scientific board of the Swiss Transdisciplinarity Net, and associated researcher with the Program Sustainability Research at the University of Basel.