

Mr. George Karakatsanis is a Natural Resource Economist and Financial Engineer. He has long research, business and consulting expertise as economic designer for the optimization of fuel, non-fuel, agricultural and biological resources for corporations and states. He is the Founder, Director and Chief Economist of EVOTROPIA Ecological Finance Architectures that specializes on natural capital classification and valuation methods, advanced data analytics for geoeconomic and supply networks modelling, Machine Learning methods for Industrial Symbiosis and the structuring of ecological finance and investment instruments. He is the scientific coordinator of several EU-funded and corporate research projects on natural resource economics, critical raw materials, soil bio-remediation and Regenerative Agriculture. He is a graduate of Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB), holding an MSc and PhD from National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) on natural capital econometrics. He has extensive professional experience in environmental banking, ecological investments, risk management, and business continuity. In the period 2014-2016, he collaborated with Technische Universität München (TUM), receiving a DAAD scholarship as a Guest Lecturer and Researcher in the international research program NEXUS Energy-Water-Food on the conflict resolution for the management of water resources in the Nile Basin, as well as a Guest Scientist in the Oscar von Miller Forum (OvMF), where he organized and conducted several workshops and lectures on the field of Natural Resource Economics for Engineers. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed works and more than 30 educational articles on natural resource economics. Since 2014, he is a research affiliate of the Laboratory of Hydrology and Water Resources Utilization of the School of Civil Engineering of NTUA. Since 2020, he is scientific advisor of the Association of the Greek Manufacturers of Packaging and Materials (AGMPM), Director of the Special Committee for Circular Economy and the Built Environment of the Sustainable Building Council Greece (SBC-GR) and member of the Hellenic Solid Waste Management Association (HSWMA), while since 2023 he is a member of the Board of Directors of FILAIOS Olive Oil Club.