Michaela Teich is a forest scientist with a special interest in working in inter- and transdisciplinary teams, aiming to study and manage protective forests and natural hazard risks in mountain areas. She earned a M.Sc. in Forestry from Technische Universität Dresden (TUD), Germany, completed her PhD on forest-avalanche interactions in 2013 at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF in Davos and ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and subsequently worked as a research associate and teaching assistant at ETH's Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems (PLUS) lab. During her postdoctoral research at Utah State University in Logan, USA, she studied for four years the snowpack in forests disturbed by bark beetles and fire. Since 2019, she is working at the Austrian Research Centre for Forests (BFW) in the Department of Natural Hazards in Innsbruck, Austria and is leading the Unit Snow and Avalanches since 2021. Michaela coordinates the IUFRO Snow and Avalanches Unit and is currently the managing director of the women exchange for Disaster Risk Reduction (we4DRR) network.