• PhD Researcher

Esther Bakels is a PhD Candidate working on impact-based forecasting of compound heat/drought events in the Water & Climate Risk department at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), in collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). Her research focuses on improving the understanding of compound climate extremes and their impacts by integrating machine learning, statistical modelling and computational methods. She investigates how heat and drought events develop, interact, and affect society and the environment, with the aim of combining this knowledge to develop impact-based forecasting models.

Esther holds a MSc degree in Computational Science from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam. In her master’s thesis, she worked on hazard susceptibility using artificial neural networks, spatio-temporal hazard clustering and rainfall extremes. She also has a bachelor’s degree in Bèta-Gamma with a major Artificial Intelligence, providing her with AI skills and an interdisciplinary foundation in the natural and social sciences. Her research interests include compound climate extremes, their societal and environmental impacts, and forecasting methods.