Iris Lewandowski studied Agricultural Sciences in Germany (Universities of Göttingen and Hohenheim) and completed her PhD on the production of bio-energy crops. Over the course of a 10-year period, she worked at the University of Hohenheim on the production of biomass crops, biomass quality management, environmental aspects, life cycle assessment (LCA) and sustainability of biomass production in agriculture - mostly in the function of Assistant Professor. From 2001 to 2006 she held a position as Senior Researcher at the Department of Science, Technology and Society of Utrecht University (Netherlands) in an interdisciplinary project on the identification of optimal bio-energy and bio-material production and utilisation systems. During this period she was involved in the acquisition and performance of different EU projects. In September 2006 she began as Exploratory Researcher at Shell Global Solutions in Amsterdam (Netherlands), where she took over the lead of the team and Shell’s biomass research programme in the function of Global Biomass R&D Program Manager. On 1 February 2010 she was appointed to the chair of “Biobased Products and Energy Crops” at the University of Hohenheim. She initiated and leads the international Master “Bioeconomy” and is editor of an open access textbook on Bioeconomy. Presently, her research focuses on the development of sustainable biomass supply systems for a growing bioeconomy, the optimisation of biomass properties for industrial and energetic applications and the development and LCA of biobased value chains.