Yale Forest Forum

Unlocking Forest Sector Innovation: The Practice and Potential Pathways to Scaling Up

This fall 2026 Yale Forest Forum speaker series will explore the opportunities, challenges, and pathways that exist and are emerging in forestry innovation. This series will highlight speakers across a wide variety of forest research institutions, practitioner settings, and geographies. The series is developed and supported by members of the Latin American Network for Forestry Education (RELAFOR) and the International Union of Forest Research Organizations’ (IUFRO) Scaling Up Science-based Forest Sector Innovation Task Force.

This fall 2026 speaker series is hosted by The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment, College of Forestry, Oregon State University, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua, México, and the Universidad Nacional de la Plata, Argentina.

Wildfire Management Innovations

October 8, 2026 | 9am PT/12pm ET

Speaker: Alexander Held, European Forest Institute

Alexander Held is a Senior Expert in Fire, Silviculture, and Wildlife at the European Forest Institute (EFI), where he works on the European Forest Risk Facility to strengthen landscape resilience through knowledge exchange, cooperation and mutual assistance across Europe. He also contributed to EFI's Integrate projects on disturbance and biodiversity in managed forests. Held earned a Master of Science in Forest Science from the University of Freiburg in Germany. He began his career in fire ecology with the Max Planck Society and the Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC), working in Europe and southern Africa before joining EFI in 2012. His expertise includes forest risk management, vegetation fire, silviculture and deer management. He also serves on the Hunting Advisory Board for the Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald district and coordinates hunting education for the Freiburg Hunting Association.