Dr. Dina Barbian holds a degree in industrial engineering (focus on manufacturing technology) and a doctorate in economics, in particular environmental economics. She wrote her doctoral thesis entitled "Economics and Sustainable Development - Developing an Approach to Implementing Sustainability" back in the 1990s. This makes her one of the first to deal with the topic of sustainability in the German-speaking world.

She has professional experience in environmental management, especially in the implementation of environmental management systems (according to EMAS and ISO 14.001). She lectures on the topics "National Sustainability Strategies", "Digitalization & Sustainability" and "Supply Chain Management". From 2011 to 2014, she was Visiting Professor at Summer University in Aarhus (Denmark) and in Sofia (Bulgaria) lecturing on "Sustainable Development and National Strategies".

From 1998 to 2021, she held the Chair of Information Systems at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Her research areas concern sustainable digitalization, technological sustainability, sustainability management, national sustainability strategies, environmental management, sharing economy, energy and resource efficiency, circular economy, resilience research in global systemic supply networks, cyber-physical systems, and interdisciplinary interface topics in the fields of production, logistics, digitalization, and sustainability. She is the author of books and professional articles.