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Environment Steering Panel
Lars Walløe (interim Chairman)
Professor emeritus Lars Walløe is head of the Laboratory for Human Circulatory Physiology at the Department of Physiology. Professor Walløe and his colleagues use modern, non-invasive methods combined with advanced data processing techniques in their research, and have focused particularly on the rapid responses of the human cardiovascular system to different stimuli and the control mechanisms underlying these responses. At present, the group is working on the skin circulation and temperature regulation, short-term control of the central circulation and blood pressure, and muscle blood flow. Lars Walløe has also published on neuronal nets, statistical methodology, historical demography, population biology, reproductive epidemiology, and whale biology.
http://folk.uio.no/larswa/e_index.html
Michael Depledge
Professor Depledge is an expert in eco-toxicology and medical toxicology. He advises the United Nations and WHO on marine pollution issues, working in Brazil, India, China and Vietnam and several other countries to deploy the Rapid Assessment of Marine Pollution program for the UN's Global Oceans Observing System. He served as the Chief Scientific Advisor of the UK's Environment Agency from 2002-6, developing their first Science Strategy and creating a Europe-wide strategic partnership among EU Member State environment agencies (SKEP - Scientific Knowledge for Environmental Protection). He is currently the Interim Director of the European Centre for Environment and Human Health which has recently been established in south-west Britain. Depledge is Commissioner of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution that advises the UK Parliament, a founding board member of Natural England, and an Honorary Professor of the Department of Zoology, Oxford University. He is also Chair of the Advisory Group on Environment and Climate Change, European Commission.
He was formerly an Honorary Visiting Scientist at Harvard School of Public Health and at Imperial College, London. He has published more that 350 scientific papers, book chapters and abstracts in the peer-reviewed scientific literature and has supervised more than 40 PhD students.
Alenka Gaberščik
Alenka Gaberščik received her Ph.D in 1991 in Ecology from the University of Ljubljana. Until 1998 she was employed at the National Institute of Biology. Since then, she has been working at the Department of Biology, Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, as associated professor. She is involved in undergraduate and postgraduate programs giving lectures on plant ecology, ecosystems, nature conservation and environment protection. Her research is oriented to plant ecology and different ecosystem processes. Her current interests are (1) the influence of UV-B radiation on plants and possible interactions with other stresses, (2) ecology of plants in aquatic ecosystems and (3) the development of the tools for implementation of EC Water Framework Directive. For 20 years she has been researching the globally known karst phenomenon - the intermittent Lake Cerknica.
She coordinated the establishment of a new Bologna MSc programme, Ecology and Biodiversity, at the Dept. of Biology; BF, UL and she was also involved in establishing new Ph.D. and undergraduate and MSc programmes of Biology for teachers. She is a head of the Research group for plant ecology and coordinator of the research program Plant Biology. She is a member of several scientific organisations, a president of Association of Biologists of Slovenia and an editor of scientific journal Acta Biologica Slovenica.
Atte Korhola
I am a professor of environmental change at the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Helsinki and leader of Environmental Change Research Unit (ECRU). My major research topics include climate change and its ecological and societal impacts, with particular reference to longer-term environmental changes and northern regions. I am actively involved in the public debate on climate change and related policy options. I am coordinator of the IGBP PAGES sub-programme Arctic2k and sub-coordinator of PAGES PEP III: High-Latitude, High Altitude regions in Europe . I have more than 100 publications in international, peer-reviewed scientific journals on different aspects of environmental change.
Christian Körner
Christian Körner is an Austrian citizen, received his academic education in Innsbruck, Austria and became a Professor of Botany in Basel in 1989. His field is best described as functional ecology, aiming at a process-based understanding of plant life and ecosystem functioning. Main research areas include alpine ecology, grassland and forest ecology. His team was the first and still the only to explore the effect of elevated CO2 concentrations on alpine biota and he runs the world's only mature natural forest CO2-enrichment facility at the Swiss canopy crane site near Basel. Christian Körner is editor in Chief of Oecologia (Springer), chairs the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA) of DIVERSITAS, is acting chair of the Swiss Biodiversity forum (SCnat) and past chair of PROCLIM, the Swiss forum for climate and global change. He worked for several years for the Science steering committee of IGBP and is still involved in SCOPES. He is member of several Academies of Sciences including the German National Academy the Leopoldina, the Austrian and the European. He is currently heading a team of 30 researchers involved in environmental sciences.
http://pages.unibas.ch/botschoen/koerner
Ch.Koerner
unibas.ch
Rajmund Michalski
Dr Michalski's scientific interests include: analytical chemistry, environmental protection, applications of chromatographic techniques (IC, HPLC, GC) to the determination of inorganic and organic compounds in environmental samples. His publications include a dozen books, book chapters, manuscripts and 150 publications about applications of ion chromatography in environmental samples analysis, as well as application of modern analytical techniques for environmental protection and assessment.
He is active in scientific debate as a Member of the Polish Association of Chemistry; the Polish Committee of Standardization (Technical Committees of Air Quality and Water Quality); the Polish Academy of Science (Committee of Analytical Chemistry - Committee of Water Analysis and Committee of Analyses in Environmental Protection) and in CASSS (the California Separation Science Society). He has held a number of Fellowships, including "Molten Sulphur Chemistry Under Ultrasonic Waves", 05.2000 - 04.2001, a post-doctoral fellowship at Tohoku University, Institute For Advanced Materials Processing, Sendai, Japan, and "Species analysis of chromium (III) and (VI) in the μg/l range using ion chromatography" 17.06.2002 - 16.08.2002, DAAD, Hessian Agency For the Environment and Geology, Rheingaustrasse,D-186, 65 203 Wiesbaden, Germany. He has participated in over 50 conferences and seminars (all with poster or lecture presentation).
Francisco Garcia Novo
Professor Francisco Garcia Novo is the Chair in Ecology in the University of Seville, Spain. He obtained his BSc and Doctor of Science degree from the University of Madrid (Complutense) in 1966 and 1968, respectively. He followed more specialized studies in the Institute of Soil Science CSIC in Madrid (1996-98) and in St. AndrewsUniversity in the UK (1968-1970).
His Research Activities include:
- Ecological studies of the vegetation in diverse bioclimatic conditions: Atlantic climates (UK), Mediterranean (Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Italy), semi-arid (Patagonia), continental (USA) and tropical (Mexico, Costa Rica).
- Development of methods and models to study the vertical plant structures, composition, regulation, biodiversity and the distribution of biomass and productivity, plus the relationships with the horizontal structure, soil characteristics and response to climate fluctuations.
- Studies on the biodiversity of the Mediterranean region and the effects of different effects caused by human activities, past and present.
- Preparation of a report on the management of European biodiversity Users' Guide to biodiversity indicators (March 2005), in collaboration with experts from other Academies of Science and the Royal Society of the European Academies' Science Advisory Council (EASAC).
- Studies on the processes of succession brought about by climatic fluctuations and human activities (deforestation, Studies on fish ecology in continental waters in the Iberian Peninsula, introduction and extinction of species.
- Numerous floristic, vegetation & edaphic studies in the DoñanaNational Park, [(Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage (Natural)] site. Also conservation, management and regional studies. The whole has resulted in 62 papers and a book synthesizing all such findings.
- Studies in other protected areas concerning human activities and transformation of terrestrial ecosystems therein.
Július Oszlányi
Július Oszlányi (1944), Dr., Director of the Institute since 1996, Forestry University Zvolen, Law Faculty of the Comenius University, Bratislava. PhD. thesis 1973 "Production of the above-ground biomass in the oak-hornbeam forest". Current work: Ecology and biodiversity of forest and mountaineous ecosystems, their ecological stability, Ecology of forested areas. Long-term ecosystem and species diversity research in oak-hornbeam forest, natural spruce forest and floodplain forests, the influence of underground water changes on species biodiversity changes. Land-use changes, land abandonment, cultural landscape preservation in the mountaineous regions ( Carpathians). Leader of Central and Eastern LTER ( Long -Term Ecological Research) Network Office, Member of Scientific Council of European Environment Agency, Copenhagen. Leader of the projects of 5th and 6th and 7 FP( Slovak part). Recipient of 2001 Prince Asturias Award as project coordinator, project proposals evaluator and delegate of the Slovak Republic in EC programme committees. Publications: 13 monographs, 37 chapters in monographs, 96 scientific papers, numerous expertises.
Rudy Rabbinge
Rudy Rabbinge is a former member of the Netherlands First Chamber and of the Scientific Council for Government Policy (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid). With extensive expertise in sustainable development and agronomy, Rabbinge has been professor at Wageningen University since 2001.
Andrea Rinaldo
Andrea Rinaldo was born in Venice (Italy) on 13/09/1954, obtained his degrees as: B+MEng, Università di Padova (1978) Summa cum Laude, Università di Padova, Ph.D. (1983) Purdue University. Professor of Hydrology and Water Resources and Director of the Laboratory of Eco-hydrology (ECHO/IEE/ENAC) at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale Lausanne (CH) and Professor, Dipartimento IMAGE, Università di Padova (Italy). Trained in Fluid Mechanics, he turned hydrologist early in his career, his recent research interests centre on the study of river networks as ecological corridors for species, populations and pathogens of water-borne disease. Among his recognitions, he was awarded: the 1999 Horton Award of the American Geophysical Union; the 2005 Dalton Medal of the European Geophysical Union; Foreign Membership of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2006) and the US National Academy of Engineering (2006); the ERC Advanced Grant Fellowship (2008) and the 2010 Borland Award. Author of more than 250 publications including about 150 peer-reviewed journal papers (h-index=30), and six books among which is I. Rodriguez-Iturbe and A. Rinaldo, Fractal river basins. Chance and Self-Organization, (Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, 1997).
John Schellnhuber
Hans Joachim "John" Schellnhuber is the German government's Chief Advisor on climate change. He is also the founding Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research and a former Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in England. In 2004 he received an honorary CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in recognition of his accomplishments in advancing a cross-disciplinary understanding of climate change.
Tarmo Soomere
Tarmo Soomere (1957) graduated in 1980 from Lomonossov Moscow State University as mathematician and received a PhD in oceanology from the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Moscow (1984), and the degree of Doctor of Mathematics (1992) from Tartu University, Estonia. He has been Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Germany (1994-1997 and 2005), Visby Fellow in the University of Uppsala, Sweden (2000-2001) and worked for one year in the Center of Mathematics for Applications, University of Oslo (2006-2008). He was appointed as Vice-Director of the Marine Systems Institute in 2002-2004 and elected as the first Professor of Coastal Engineering in Estonia (2005). Currently he is the Head of Wave Engineering Laboratory in the Institute of Cybernetics. His scientific interests have been mostly concentrated in wave theory and modeling, with specific focus on various processes in the nearshore and coastal zone management. In 2002 he received the Estonian State Research Award. He was declared the Person of the Year in Estonia 2005 by the daily newspaper The Postman for his contribution to the forecast of a devastating storm, received the Baltic Assembly Prize for science (2007), was elected to Estonian Academy of Sciences (2007) and to Academia Europaea (2009).
John Sweeney
Professor John Sweeney has been a lecturer and researcher at the Geography Department National University of Ireland Maynooth, since 1978. He received a First Class Honours B.Sc. from the University of Glasgow in 1974 and was a awarded a PhD also from Glasgow in 1980. John has taught courses primarily related to climatology, but he has also taught biogeography, geomorphology and environmental resource management and has taught and researched at a number of universities in North America and Africa. He has also been involved in course design and curriculum development matters at second and third levels. Over the past 30 years he has published approximately 60 scientific papers and edited/co-authored 4 texts on various aspects of climatology and climate change in Ireland. He has served a number of national academic societies as President, Secretary and Treasurer as well as being the Irish representative on a number of European academic bodies. He currently is Presiden tof the Irish National Trust and also leads a number of research projects examining various aspects of climate change in Ireland. He is a regular contributor to a variety of media outlets and also currently serves on the Board of Friends of the Earth Ireland and the Advisory Committee of the Irish Environmental Protection Agency. As one of the contributing Authors and Review Editors of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he shared with several hundred other climatologists the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Christos Zerefos
Member, Academy of Athens Professor, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Christos S. Zerefos was born in Cairo, Egypt and graduated in Physics from the University of Athens. MSc in Meteorology and Ph.D. in Physics-Meteorology, University of Athens. Post Doctoral researcher, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and other Research Institutions in Greece and abroad. Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the Universities of Thessaloniki and Athens (1973-today), Visiting Professor at the Universities of Boston, Minnesota and Oslo. Member of the Academy of Athens, the Norwegian Academy, the Academia Europaea, the EASAC Environment Steering Panel and other research Institutions. Fellow of the Institute of Physics and Life Member of the American Geophysical Union. Global Ozone Award (1997), Honourable Mentions from the United Nations Environmental Program (1995-1998), Award Certificate and Letter from UNEP and from IPCC (2008) for his substantial contribution to the reports of IPCC (he worked as review editor of Chapter 5 of the IPCC Aviation Report, 1998), Honorary Mention from the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, the European Physical Society, Gold Medal of the Municipality of Thessaloniki. His total published work comprises of about 200 research papers in peer reviewed scientific journals. His work has been acknowledged from the scientific community with more than 3500 citations. Holder of the UNESCO Chair for Natural Disasters, President elect of the International Ozone Commission (IO3C) of IAMAS of ICSU, f. President of the National Observatory of Athens and other national and international fora.