Dilek Fraisl is a research scholar in the Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability (NODES) Research Group of the IIASA Advancing Systems Analysis Program. She has a PhD in Sustainability Transitions from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU) in Austria, where she studied the integration of new data sources such as citizen science and Earth Observation into official statistics to address the world's greatest development challenges, from poverty to environmental degradation. She also has an MSc in Sustainable Development from the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium, the University of Padua in Italy, and Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne in France.
Fraisl's research interests are sustainable development, data and statistics, Earth Observation, and citizen science as theory, practice, and evidence-base for policy development. She has worked in the areas of data governance and data management, including research on citizen science data quality. She has led and contributed to citizen science projects related to marine litter, land use, and land cover, as well as other environmental issues funded by the European Commission, UN agencies, and other donors. For example, she coordinated the 'Citizen Science for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) project' that leveraged citizen science data for monitoring and reporting of the marine litter SDG indicator in Ghana, as well as for policy and action.
Fraisl has been the chair of the European Commission funded "WeObserve SDGs and Citizen Science Community of Practice", which aims to foster collaboration and consolidate knowledge on the contributions of citizen science to the SDGs across the global citizen science-, and data and statistics communities. She has published scientific papers in areas of sustainable development, data and statistics, citizen science, and Earth Observations, and also contributed to several UN reports such as Measuring Progress: Environment and SDGs and Understanding the State of the Ocean: A Global Manual on Measuring SDG 14.1.1, SDG 14.2.1 and SDG 14.5.1 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
She has several board memberships with scientific communities, the UN, and other global initiatives, including the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (SDSN TReNDS), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Resilience Frontiers, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), and the Global Citizen Science Partnership (GCSP), among others. She is also involved in the organizing committees and scientific advisory boards of several European and global conferences including the UN World Data Forum.