1. Curriculum Vitae Dr. Tomas Thierfelder:
Date of birth: 18th of December 1955. Citizen: Swede. Degree/title: PhD, Professor assoc. of Biometry, esp. Environmetrics and Geoinformatics. Affiliation: Department of Energy and Technology (ET), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). Phone: mobile phone: +46 70 1720472. Internet: Tomas.Thierfelder@outlook.com.
Family: Wife Maria, daughter Emelie, son-in-law Thomas, grandchildren Hilma, Hugo, and Hedda. Residence: Bussemåla at the south-Swedish coast near Ronneby. Interests: Nature, gardening, birding, boating, foods and wines, literature, history, etc.
2. Overall academic profile
In order to review a biometrician, the concept of biometry needs to be explained. A typical biometrician is methodologically skilled, but do not necessarily develop new methods (like mathematicians do). Instead, a biometrician brings the latest methodologies from the developers, into the applied disciplines of personal specialization. A typical biometrician works with one foot in methodological theory, and the other in applied science. This contributes to forwarding science disciplines into new methodological realms where, occasionally, deep fundamentals may be found. The personal science interests of TT span chronologically from coastal circulation and sediment transport, landscape hydrology and water resources, to animal and human behaviour, population entomology and integrated pest management, forestry, and climate-change effects on the epidemiology of Northern zoonotic infections. Since inferential methodologies are shared across fields of application, biometricians may publish quite broadly while maintaining methodological focus. Besides biometry, TT specializes in environmental informatics, information systems, and science infrastructures. TT is also an awarded expert of integrating collaborative interdisciplinary science efforts.
3. Present work
TT has officially retired from office from 2025, but is still active at SLU. During the last couple of decades, TT has received grants that exceed 10 MEUR and coordinated some of the largest international science projects of the far North. TT has thereby employed and supported a vast international staff of scientists, technicians, doctoral students, postdocs, and teachers spread across institutions of the North. The associated subjects have been health-related (OneHealth) effects of climate change (CLINF: www.clinf.org) and science infrastructures of the Arctic (INTERACT: www.eu-interact.org), where TT has become an international pioneer of the OneHealth concept and an expert of interdisciplinary science designs. As a token of success and trust, TT and colleague prof. Birgitta Evengård received an award by the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2022, that granted them co-authorship of the Agenda 2030 health section.
TT examined approximately 30 annual full-time study equivalents, mostly in the subjects of biometry, geographic information systems, and geographic analysis. TT coordinated a major Nordic Centre of Excellence (CLINF, 6.5 MEUR), was the principal investigator of major international and national science infrastructures (INTERACT and SITES, 45 MEUR), was the principal investigator of a national Swedish agricultural decision support infrastructure for integrated pest management and was engaged as a biometry expert in the development of forestry technologies. TT is a highly cited author of scientific publications, and continues to be an associate editor of Frontiers in Climate, section Climate and Health.
4. Record of Academic Affiliations
Present: Officially retired from 2025, former Professor assoc., docent, chief scientist, senior lecturer, at the Department of Energy & Technology, SLU Ultuna, from 2008. Past: Research fellow at the department of Energy & Technology (through various constellations), SLU Ultuna, from 2000. Temporarily appointed senior lecturer at the Department of Mathematics, Mathematical Statistics, Uppsala University from 1999. Temporarily appointed lecturer at the Institute of Earth Sciences, Department of Hydrology, Uppsala University from 1997. Ph.D. student at the Institute of Earth Sciences, department of Recent Sedimentology, Uppsala University, from November 1992. Research assistant at the Institute for Thematic Research, Department of Water and Environmental Studies, Linköping University, from July 1990.
5. Selection of other affiliations and memberships
Long term resource person through the development of Environmental Climate Data Sweden (ECDS: www.ecds.se), the national Swedish infrastructure in support of environmental and climate research. Resource person in the development of a European meta-infrastructure of Environmental and Earth System Research Infrastructures (ENVRI-plus: www.envriplus.eu). Resource person in the development of the European research infrastructure Analysis and Experimentation on Ecosystems (AnaEE: www.anaee.com). Resource person through the development of The Arctic Spatial Data Infrastructure (Arctic SDI: www.arctci-sdi.org). Board member of local, regional, and national organizations in support of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Member of the Microsoft Cambridge Think Tank. Member of organizations in support of nature management, ornithology, sail-sport, etc.
6. Education
Post doc (2000): Visiting Research Fellows Award granted by the Cooperative Research Centre for Catchment Hydrology at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering within The University of Melbourne, Australia.
University degrees: Professor assoc. (docent) of Biometry, esp. Environmetrics and Geoinformatics at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences SLU, November 2008. Ph.D. Earth Sciences/Aquatic Environmental Physics at Uppsala University, November 1998. Title of thesis: An Inductive Approach to the Modelling of Lake Water Quality. 146 p., ISBN 91-554-4309-5. Ph.Lic. Earth Sciences/Aquatic Environmental Physics at Uppsala University, October 1995. Title of thesis: The Hydrodynamics of Near-shore Oceans. Geo-ecological Methods in Coastal Ecosystems. 185 p., ISBN 91-630-3795-5. Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics (main), Theoretical Physics (second), and Philosophy (third) at Linköping University, 1989.
7. Scientific Qualifications
Active in many research and consultancy projects since the late eighties, whereof some have included the coordination of international consortia. Selection of grants: Co-initiator, science coordinator and principal investigator in Nordic Centre of Excellence “Climate-change effects on the epidemiology of infectious diseases and the impacts on Northern societies” (CLINF: www.clinf.org), granted by NordForsk for the period of 2016 - 2024. Principal investigator in EU infrastructure project “International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic” (INTERACT: www.eu-interact.org), granted by the EU’s seventh framework programme for the period of 2010 – 2024. Principal investigator in research project “Web-based tortricid prognosis - a pilot project on integrated insect control”, granted by the Swedish Farmer’s Foundation for Agricultural Research through the period 2010 – 2017. Principal investigator in research project “New Statistical Methodologies for Measuring Timber in Large-Scale Forestry”, granted by The Brattås Foundation for Forestry Science, for the period 2015 – 2017.
8. Pedagogic qualifications
TT holds a considerable portfolio of pedagogic activities, containing a number of characterising elements such as having contributed to the introduction of interdisciplinary CASE-methodology into the basic subjects of mathematics and mathematical statistics at Uppsala University around year 2000, having contributed to the initiation of the educational SLU programme of “Ethology and Animal Welfare” around year 2008, particularly with respect to CASE-based statistical education, and having initiated and implemented most of the (CASE-based) education regarding environmetrics and geoinformatics, including GIS-education, currently provided at the Uppsala-campus of SLU (2025). TT arranges and examines education at all levels, mainly across disciplines such as philosophy, scientific theory, information theory, inferential statistics, system theory, system development, environmental informatics, geographic and environmental information systems, and geographic analysis. TT specialises in CASE-pedagogy, has had dozens of course responsibilities through the years, holds formal examiner status at SLU, has formal pedagogical education, and is highly active in pedagogy and education. TT currently examines approximately 30 annual full-time study equivalents (2025) and employs a significant staff of teachers at his university department.
With the subject of biometry focusing on science methodology across traditional disciplines of applied science, most of TT’s research students were collaboratively supervised with the main supervisor representing the applied subject of the thesis. TT has supervised 16 scholars through to doctoral examination under such conditions, being officially appointed as methodological supervisor in the cases listed below. This involves initial philosophical and scientific assessment, identification of testable hypotheses, experimental design, experimental implementation, statistical inference and hypotheses testing, identification and interpretation of results, and formal publishing. Hence, TT has provided much of the methodological (hypothetic-deductive) backbone to the theses of his supervision as well as the methodological identity of the respective scholars.
Record of Pedagogical Activities: Administrator of university education since 2004. Full university lecturer since 1997. Assistant university lecturer since the late 1980’s.
Supervision at graduate levels of education: Supervision of approximately 20 master theses ranging from earth sciences, environmental impacts assessments, and landscape planning, to ethology, biology, and biometric quality control.
Supervision at doctoral levels of education: Petheram C., 2003: Development of a regional scale salinity risk method using a catchment classification – Melbourne School of Engineering, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Cederlund H., 2006: The microbiology of railway tracks. Towards a rational use of herbicides on Swedish railways – SLU AUAS 2006:44. Wretenberg J., 2006. The decline of farmland birds in Sweden – SLU AUAS 2006:113. Loberg J., 2007: Behaviour of Foster Cows and Calves in Dairy Production. Acceptance of Calves, Cow-Calf Interactions and Weaning – SLU AUAS 2007:122. Nielsen P., 2008. Behaviours related to milk intake in dairy calves – SLU AUAS 2008:11. Elmgren Frykberg G., 2010: Movement Control after Stroke. Studies on Sit-to-walk and on the Relations between Clinical and Laboratory Measures. UU AUUU 2010:593. Ghafoor A., 2013: Understanding the causes of spatial variation in pesticide sorption and degradation at the catchment scale – SLU AUAS 2013:8. Sjöberg P., 2016: Strategies for Integrated Pest Control in Nordic Apple Production – SLU AUAS 2016:12. Fridh L., 2015: Measuring Forest Fuel Quality for Trade and Production Management – SLU AUAS 2017:56. Mohtashami S., 2022: GIS-based decision support systems to minimise soil impacts in logging operations – SLU AUAS 2022:67. Ma Y., 2023: Quantifying hydroclimatic change impacts on infectious diseases. Signals and geographies from local to global scale – Dissertations in Physical Geography No. 25, Stockholm University, Sweden.
9. Scientific Copyrights and Patents
Approximately ninety personally authored peer-reviewed publications, abstracts, and book/booklets in international and national journals, and another eighty-five (an approximate total of 175 publications) facilitated under the auspices of CLINF (led by TT and prof. Birgitta Evengård) – a list of publications may be provided upon request. PI and copyright holder of major international web-based metadata infrastructure INTERACT GIS (https://interact-gis.org/), which hosts a national Swedish infrastructure of nine scientific field-stations SITES (www.fieldsites.se) and 85 (approximately) INTERACT field stations across the Northern Polar region (www.eu-interact.org). PI and copyright holder of international web-based decision support system concerning integrated pest management of Nordic apple orchards, “The Tortricidae Portal”.
