Prof. Dr. Mark Lawrence

Prof. Dr. Mark Lawrence is scientific director at RIFS. He addresses the Anthropocene in an integrative manner, bringing together a wide range of academic expertise in his team and involving societal actors in a transdisciplinary research approach.

His main transformative research topics include air pollution, climate change, climate geoengineering, environment-related governance of vulnerable regions like the Himalayas, the Arctic and the ocean, and the sustainability-oriented interfaces between the sciences and other key knowledge-holder communities such as the arts, religions and indigenous peoples.

He also actively supports whole person development as a component of sustainability, including exploring the common ground between personal transformations and systemic transformations, as well as the mindsets needed to bring these into harmony.

Prof. Lawrence received his Ph.D. in 1996 from the Georgia Institute of Technology. From 2000 until 2011 he was a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz. He served as interim professor for meteorology at the University of Mainz during 2009‐2010, and moved to the IASS in 2011. In 2014 he was appointed Honorary Professor at the University of Potsdam.

Prof. Lawrence is author or co‐author of over 190 peer‐reviewed publications, with an h-index of over 79 on Google Scholar and over 65 on Scopus. He has led various international projects, and has been serving on the editorial and advisory boards of various journals and on various national and international committees, including having been co‐chair of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry program (IGAC) from 2015‐2018, and now being co-chair of the Science Platform for Sustainability 2030 (wpn2030), as well as a member of the German Sustainability Council (RNE), the steering committee of the German Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), and the board of directors of the German Climate Consortium (DKK).