Marufa Sultana

Dr. Marufa Sultana is a Researcher at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and a Visiting Scientist at the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Management, Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Freiburg, Germany. She leads the project CitiesForALL: Co-creating future cities for people and wildlife and contributes to research on urban biodiversity through fieldwork, data analysis, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

• PhD in Wildlife Ecology and Management (University of Freiburg, 2022)
• Research areas: Urban ecology, biodiversity conservation, nature-based solutions, and socioecological urban planning
• Current roles: Postdoc at ITAS-KIT with YIG Prep Pro Fellowship; Visiting Scientist at University of Freiburg

Her research focuses on understanding how urbanization, landscape connectivity, and socioeconomic factors influence avian diversity across climate zones. She integrates ecological fieldwork with spatial analysis and citizen science data to improve urban planning frameworks for wildlife conservation.

Recent publications address cross-regional comparisons of biodiversity drivers (Southern Asia vs. Western Europe), small green space functionality for birds, and trade-offs between impervious surfaces and habitat heterogeneity. Key methodologies include GIS modeling, species distribution mapping, and multivariate statistical analysis.

• 2023: KIT Young Investigator Group Preparation Program scholarship
• 2022-2024: Senior Expert on biodiversity and nature-based solutions at ICLEI European Secretariat

She collaborates with interdisciplinary teams in the Sylvanus research group at ITAS, specializing in urban forest resilience and habitat trade-off analysis. Her work emphasizes co-creation approaches with municipalities and stakeholders to develop climate-adaptive urban landscapes.