Catherina Cader

Activities

• Project manager and head of the Research Unit Off-Grid Systems
• Geospatial modeling of grid extension and decentralized electrification pathways
• Geographical analyses with SAGA GIS, R, QGIS, GRASS, and satellite imagery analyses for defining electrified regions, assessing loads, and estimating renewable energy potential
• Developing and conducting trainings for spatial rural electrification planning
• Project management

Personal Information

Catherina Cader is an expert in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and rural electrification planning and has been working at RLI since 2012. She is heading the Research Unit Off-Grid Systems since January 2021 together with Philipp Blechinger, after having been Deputy Head for one year. She is particularly interested in rural electrification planning in countries of the Global South with consideration of renewable energy.

Catherina holds a PhD in Geography from Justus Liebig University Giessen. For her dissertation, which she successfully defended in 2018, she conducted research on rural electrification planning in Nigeria. Her PhD project was supported by a scholarship from the Reiner Lemoine-Foundation. She also holds a Master of Science in Geography from Philipps University Marburg and a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Management from Justus Liebig University Gießen.

Through field visits and self-developed trainings on the use of GIS for rural electrification planning, Catherina has great expertise on the political, geographical, economic, and technical challenges of local energy supply situations. By developing and applying GIS-based methods, she brings the spatial component into RLI research using open source software. Catherina has experience as a project manager in several projects – her work has taken her to various places including Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, Nepal, Myanmar, and the Philippines.

Catherina publishes her research results in scientific journals and at conferences.