Professor

Dr. Getachew Assefa is an Associate Professor of Sustainable Design at SAPL. His prolific academic writing and teaching experience spans Canada, Sweden, China, and Ethiopia. He is the former Athena Chair in Life Cycle Assessment at the Faculty of Environmental Design, and currently consults in product sustainability positioning and life cycle assessment. He was the winner of the University of Calgary’s Sustainability Award for 2017 in the Campus as Learning Lab Category, and the Outstanding Teaching Performance Award from the Schulich School of Engineering in 2015 and 2016. His research interests include sustainable design, life cycle sustainability assessment, energy services, climate change, and industrial ecology. He believes that design and technology should be used to advance human economic and social development in a holistically sustainable way that addresses issues of equity and environmental impact.

Dr. Assefa and his team are working to develop commercial software that can help companies incorporate all three dimensions of sustainability through triple-bottom-line life cycle analyses. He believes complex problems require a lot of data to solve, so the startup is looking to use machine learning to mine the data. “It’s about doing the analysis, but also making it meaningful for informing decisions.” He hopes that this work can help inform the future, bringing insight and understanding that can drive change.

Research Interest

• Assefa, G., Glaumann, M., Malmqvist, T., and Eriksson, O. (2010) Quality versus impact: comparing the environmental efficiency of building properties using the EcoEffect tool. Accepted to Building and Environment. 45( 5),1095-1103.
• Assefa, G., Glaumann, M., Malmqvist, T., Kindembe, B., Hult, M., Myhr, U. and Eriksson, O. (2007) Environmental assessment of building properties - where natural and social sciences meet: The case of EcoEffect. Building and Environment 42, 1458-1464
• Ekvall, T., Assefa, G., Björklund, A., Eriksson, O. and Finnveden, G. (2007) What life-cycle assessment does and doesn't do in assessments of waste management. Waste Management.  27( 8), 989-996
• Assefa, G., Frostell, B. (2006) Social sustainability and social acceptance in technology assessment: a case study on energy technologies. Technology in Society 29 (1), 63-78.
• Zhenhong, G., Wennersten, R. and Assefa, G. (2006) Analysis of the most widely used Building Environmental Assessment methods. Environmental Science.  3(3),175-192
• Assefa, G., Björklund, A., Eriksson, O., Frostell, B. (2005) ORWARE: an aid to Environmental Technology Chain Assessment. Journal of Cleaner Production 13(3), 265-274.
• Assefa, G., Eriksson, O., Frostell, B. (2005) Technology assessment of thermal treatment technologies using ORWARE.  Energy Conversion and Management 46, 797-819.
• Eriksson, O., Carlsson Reich, M., Frostell, B., Björklund, A., Assefa, G., Sundqvist, J. -O., Granath, J., Baky, A., Thyselius, L. (2005) Municipal Solid Waste Management from a Systems Perspective. Journal of Cleaner Production 13(3), 241-252.
• Assefa, G., Frostell, B. (2005) A systematic approach for addressing input data uncertainties in technology assessment of new technologies: the case of ORWARE. Manuscript submitted to The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. 
• Eriksson, O., Frostell, B., Björklund, A., Assefa, G., Sundqvist, J-O., Granath, J., Carlsson, M., Baky, A., Thyselius, L. (2002) ORWARE - A simulation tool for waste management. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 36(4), 287-307

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