Imanol Zabaleta is the director of the Center for Environmental Studies in Vitoria-Gasteiz. Previously, he worked as a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag-Sandec), and as a freelance consultant. His field of work was municipal solid waste management in low and middle-income settings. He has carried out projects in countries such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Philippines, Tanzania, Kenya, Mexico, Seychelles, Morocco, etc. in collaboration with local partners and international organisations such as UN-Habitat, the German development agency (GIZ), the Japanese development agency (JICA), WWF and several NGOs. He has authored and co-authored several publications and has been closely involved in the development and validation of marine litter estimation models and waste-related SDGs. He is also one of the main lecturers of the Coursera-hosted MOOC "Municipal Solid Waste Management in Developing Countries". The Centre for Environmental Studies, which he currently directs, is an autonomous organisation whose mission is to create and push sustainability strategies in Vitoria-Gasteiz, acting as a link between research and municipal implementation. The Centre currently works around 6 strategic lines: Urban Green Infrastructure, Mobility, Food Systems, Circular Materials, Citizen activation and Data Science.

2019 - now: Research Associate, Project Manager (R&D-Project: Holzbau-GIS) Resource Efficient Building - Prof. Dr.-Ing. Annette Hafner 2016 - 2019: Environmental Engineering and Resource Management (M.Sc.), Ruhr-University Bochum Major: Water Management and Geotechnics Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 2017 - 2017: Sciences and Techniques of Urban Environments (M.Sc.), Ecole Centrale de Nantes (France) 2012 - 2016: Environmental Engineering and Resource Management (B.Sc.), Ruhr-University Bochum Major: Environmental Technology and Planning Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

I am currently a PhD candidate in Environmental Planning at Queen’s University Belfast and my PhD research topic intends to argue that the successful development of vertical greenery in Shenzhen needs to become a consensus of society. My research interests include vertical greenery, sustainable development, megacity and landscape design.