Sybille's expertise is in sustainability governance, science-policy interfaces, decision-making and policy formation under conditions of complexity, integration of natural and social sciences research, environmental research strategies and corporate environmental strategies. Today, she mainly applies her research to the areas of biodiversity policies at international and EU levels, and socioeconomic aspects of biodiversity change. She has also worked in areas such as: climate change, radioactive waste management policies, the EU chemical and pesticides policies, and sustainability strategies of corporations.

Her background is high-energy physics and ecological economics. She is Director of MEDIAN, a small research, teaching and consulting company, and Visiting Professor at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Sybille is involved in several European FP7 research projects including HERMIONE (Hotspot Ecosystem Research and Man’s Impact on European Seas), in which she leads the workpackage on socioeconomics and science-policy interfaces; SCALES (Securing the Conservation of biodiversity across Administrative Levels and spatial, temporal, and Ecological Scales); and she is the co-coordinator of SPIRAL (Science-Policy Interfaces for Biodiversity: Research, Action, and Learning). Under FP6 she contributed to HERMES, Rubicode, GoverNat and BioStrat. Sybille is also involved in the TEMPUS-funded project EnGo (Environmental Governance for Environmental Curricula).

She is vice-chair of the Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency (EEA). From 2003 to 2009, she was vice chair of the steering committee of the European Platform for Biodiversity Research Strategy (EPBRS). She also chaired of the Scientific Advisory Council of the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT) network of excellence.