Clara Caiafa is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Technology, Innovation, and Society (TIS) research group of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the opportunities and risks arising from the processes of structural change in the green transition, including changes in production technologies, reconfiguration of global value chains, and implications for specialization and development policies in countries and regions. She has expertise on both quantitative and qualitative methods, specially input-output based macroeconomic modelling and expert interviews.

Her current work focuses on the challenges associated with industrial decarbonisation. By analysing the socioeconomic and environmental implications of future global value chains for green industrial production, including the potential distributional effects between workers, income groups, and regions, she aims to inform how governments can simultaneously accelerate industrial decarbonisation, promote socioeconomic wellbeing and achieve strategic autonomy.

Clara has a solid experience in the science-policy interface. She is currently a Lead Author in the chapter on Industry from the Working Group III contribution to the Seventh Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on climate change mitigation, being one of the youngest scholars globally to serve in this function. She was previously also a Chapter Scientist and Contributing Author in chapter "Innovation, Technology Development and Transfer" of the Working Group III contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on climate change mitigation. She has also served as an advisor to the World Bank, the European Commission Joint Research Center, and the Technology Executive Committee of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Clara obtained her Ph.D. cum laude at the Eindhoven University of Technology and her dissertation informed the national debate on subsidies for decarbonising energy intensive industries in the Netherlands. During her Ph.D., she was a guest researcher at the Basque Center for Climate Change (BC3) in the low carbon transitions research group.

She has a MSc in Economics from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2024)(cum laude), a MSc in International Politics from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (2019) (magna cum laude), and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the Pontificia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais (2017), Brazil.

Before joining TU/e, she worked as a Junior Researcher in the group Macroeconomics & Innovation from the Department of Economics at PUC Minas, Brazil, and received a research scholarship from the Minas Gerais Research Support Foundation (FAPEMIG) to conduct research on the economic cooperation between China and Latin America. She also worked as a Research Assistant at the Center for Research on Peace and Development at KU Leuven (Belgium).