Prof. Dr. Kathrin Greiff studied and obtained her doctorate at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in the field of environmental planning and engineering ecology. After her studies, she worked at the German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU) from 2006 to 2008 and as a doctoral student at the Chair of Raw Materials and Energy Technology at TUM until 2009. Following her doctorate, she was employed as a project manager at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy gGmbH in the department of Sustainable Production and Consumption from 2010 to 2020. In September 2020, she took over as head of the Institute for Anthropogenic Material Cycles at RWTH Aachen University as a university professor. She is also appointed as the RWTH's rector's delegate for sustainability and is responsible for the field of research. In addition, she is the spokesperson for the RWTH's Center of Circular Economy (CCE).

Besides her teaching and research duties, Prof. Greiff takes on other activities in the scientific system, such as being a member of the international scientific advisory board of the Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf (HZDR) as well as being member of the “Energy Systems of the Future – ESYS” initiative and a scientific committee member at various national and international conferences, like the World Resource Forum, Lifecycle Management Conference, Recy&Depotech, DGAW Science Congress, and Berlin Conference on Metal Cycles (BKM). Prof. Greiff is also a member of the NaRess network, the German Waste Management Association (DGAW), and the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE).