Dr. Ella Kirchner

POSTDOCTORAL NETWORK  |   Global Change Center

Postdoctoral Associate

Faculty Mentor:  Dr. Elinor Benami

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

ellak@vt.edu 

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Ella Kirchner is an Agricultural Economist. She works as a Research Associate with Dr. Elinor Benami at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at Virginia Tech. Before joining Virginia Tech, she completed her PhD under the supervision of Dr. Oliver Mußhoff at the University of Göttingen, Germany. She also holds and MS in Agricultural Economics as well as an MS in BioEconomy from the University of Hohenheim, Germany.

Ella's research focuses on developing index insurance products that mitigate production risks such as drought, floods, and pest outbreaks for smallholder farmers in developing countries. Her work examines the opportunities and challenges brought by new digital technologies in the insurance sector, with the goal of improving climate change adaptation tools and strengthening farmers' resliience to climate threats.

At Virginia Tech, Ella supports the NASA Harvest research consortium, which aims to advance the use of remote sensing data for global food security, agriculture, and resilience. Her contributions focus on using earth observation data to enhance risk transfer and insurance solutions. As part of this internal research consortium, Ella collaborates with research partners from institutions across the United States and worldwide.