Pre-Screening Committee

Professor Hans Joachim (‘John’) Schellnhuber studied physics and mathematics at the University of Regensburg, where he also completed his doctorate in quantum physics. Following a postdoctoral position at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Santa Barbara, he held full professorships at the Universities of Oldenburg and Potsdam, as well as at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Additionally, he was engaged in numerous visiting professorships, including positions at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Oxford University, Stockholm University, and the Santa Fe Institute. Schellnhuber received honorary doctorates from the University of Copenhagen (2011), the Technical University Berlin (2012), and the University of Exeter (2022). He has published some 300 scientific articles and books in fundamental physics, complex systems analysis, climate change research, sustainability science, and more. Schellnhuber is listed as a Highly Cited Researcher (Cross Field) by Clarivate.

Since December 2023, Schellnhuber has been appointed as the twelfth Director General of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. Before this, Schellnhuber led the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) from 1992 to 2018 as their founding director and also served as research director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Great Britain from 2001 to 2005.

Since 2019, Schellnhuber has been focusing his scientific work and communication skills on the transformation of the built environment, with a specific emphasis on the climate restoration potential of regenerative architecture. In this context, he established Bauhaus Earth as a not-for-profit company and became a member of the High-Level Roundtable of the New European Bauhaus initiative.

Schellnhuber is member of numerous learned societies, including the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy Leopoldina, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Academia Europaea, and the Academy of Athens. Throughout his career, Schellnhuber has received several notable awards, such as the German Environmental Prize (2007), the Volvo Environmental Prize (2011), the Blue Planet Prize (2017), and the Ratio et Spes Prize (2021). In 2022, Schellnhuber was also awarded the Honorary Edition of the German Sustainability Prize for his “enormous influence on science, politics, and business by developing and communicating sustainable solutions to the global environmental crisis”.

Schellnhuber acted as a scientific advisor to a number of eminent public and religious leaders, including the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Commission Presidents José Manuel Barroso and Ursula von der Leyen, and Pope Francis. For 28 continuous years, he has served as a member and chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) since its establishment in 1992. He contributed in various ways to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

In recognition of his achievements, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber received several prestigious honors, including being named a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II (2004). He was also awarded the Order of Merit of the State of Brandenburg (2008), the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2011) and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, of the Japanese Government (2020). In 2021, Schellnhuber received the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany from President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and became Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur of the French Republic.

Professor Fiona Watt obtained her first degree from Cambridge University and her DPhil, in cell biology, from the University of Oxford. She was a postdoc at MIT, where she first began studying differentiation and tissue organisation in mammalian epidermis. She established her first research group at the Kennedy Institute for Rheumatology in London and then spent 20 years at the CRUK London Research Institute. She helped to establish the CRUK Cambridge Research Institute and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research and in 2012 she moved to King’s College London to found the Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine. From 2018 to 2022 she was on secondment as Executive Chair of the Medical Research Council. In 2022 she moved to Heidelberg where she runs a lab at EMBL and is EMBO Director.

Prof. Dr. Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter is Chair of the Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology at the University of Würzburg, Germany. He studies the impact of global environmental change on biodiversity and ecosystem services. His expertise covers biodiversity – ecosystem functioning relationships, pollinator ecology, crop pollination services, biological pest control, tropical agroforestry systems and landscape ecology. It is his ambition to lay the scientific ground for sustainable landscape management and agri-environmental schemes shaping the transition to future climate-resilient, adaptive and biodiverse ecosystems.

He has extensive experience as coordinator and partner in several international, African, European and national research projects and a long-lasting track record of successful inter- and transdisciplinary cooperation. He has published more than 300 peer reviewed articles and currently coordinates the EU H2020 project Safeguard – Safeguarding European pollinators.

Vivian Yam is the Philip Wong Wilson Wong Professor in Chemistry and Energy and Chair Professor of Chemistry at The University of Hong Kong. She was elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, International Member (Foreign Associate) of US National Academy of Sciences, Foreign Member of Academia Europaea, Fellow of TWAS and Founding Member of Hong Kong Academy of Sciences.

She was Laureate of the 2011 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award. Professor Yam has also received a number of prestigious awards, including the RSC Centenary Medal, RSC Ludwig Mond Award, Porter Medal, FACS Foundation Lectureship Award, APA Masuhara Lectureship Award, JPA Eikohsha Award, JSCC International Award, State Natural Science Award, CCS-China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) Chemistry Contribution Prize, CCS Huang Yao-Zeng Organometallic Chemistry Award, Croucher Senior Research Fellowship, and others.

Her research interests include inorganic/organometallic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, photophysics and photochemistry, and metal-based molecular functional materials for sensing, organic optoelectronics and energy research.

More information about Prof. Yam can be found at http://web.hku.hk/~wwyam/yam/homepage/

Alta (Aletta E.) Schutte is Professor and Principal Lead of the Cardiac, Vascular and Metabolic Medicine Theme in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, with a joint appointment as Professorial Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health. She is also Extraordinary Professor at the North-West University, South Africa. She has over 350 publications in the field of hypertension and cardiovascular disease. She is involved in numerous international consortia, such as the Global Burden of Disease study (Washington DC), the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (London), May Measurement Month initiative of the International Society of Hypertension, IDACO/IDCARS studies (Belgium), and is an invited author of the Lancet Commission of Hypertension.

She has been acknowledged for her work as winner of the Distinguished Woman Scientist in the Natural, Engineering and Life Sciences award, presented by the South African Department of Science and Technology; the NSTF South 32 TW Kambule Award; the British Association Medal from the Southern Africa Association for the Advancement of Science (S2A3), the Meiring Naude Medal from the Royal Society of South Africa, the AU-TWAS (African Union & The World Academy of Sciences) Award, and the 2019 African Union Kwame Nkrumah Regional Award for Scientific Excellence. She is a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology, the International Society of Hypertension and the Royal Society of South Africa; the Past President of the Southern African Hypertension Society (SAHS); and Immediate Past President of the International Society of Hypertension (ISH).

Professor Ngoc-Minh Do is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and is currently serving as the Vice Provost of VinUniversity.

Since 2002, he has been a faculty at UIUC, where he is currently the Thomas and Margaret Huang Endowed Professor in Signal Processing & Data Science in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and holds affiliate appointments with the Coordinated Science Laboratory, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, the Department of Bioengineering, and the Department of Computer Science.

He was previously the Vice editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Image Processing and member of IEEE Technical Committees on Signal Processing. In 2014, he was appointed IEEE Fellow for his contribution in image representation and computerized images. Professor Do believes that modern researchers need to have both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary understanding to develop novel ideas. With this in mind, he has made significant contributions in technology transfer as the Chief Technology Officer of Personify, scientific lead of Misfit, and Beckman Fellow at Center for Advanced Study, UIUC. Prof. Do has a strong research foundation with an H-Index of 60.

In addition to 70 scientific publications and 63 presentations at international conferences, Prof. Do has been honored with prestigious awards such as the NSF Career Award by the National Science Fund; Best Student Paper Award in the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP); Most Innovative Paper Award at IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP); Xerox Award for researching Faculty, Technology University, UIUC and IEEE Best Paper Award.

He is also the recipient of the Best Doctoral Thesis Award from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in 2001, University Medal from the University of Canberra, Australia in 1997, and Silver Medal in the 32nd International Mathematical Olympiad, Sweden (1991).

Professor Mônica Alonso Cotta obtained her B.Sc. and PhD in Physics from University of Campinas, Brazil and was a postdoctoral fellow at AT&T Bell Laboratories, USA. She is a full professor and currently Director of the Institute of Physics “Gleb Wataghin” at the University of Campinas, Brazil, where she also heads research at the Nano and Biosystems Laboratory.

She is the author of over 140 articles published in scientific journals and works as associate editor for ACS Applied Nano Materials.

Her research interests include semiconductor nanomaterials, from synthesis to biosensor fabrication, and applications of optical, electronic and scanning microscopy in the investigation of biomaterials and biological systems. She was a member of the Brazilian Physical Society Gender Relations Committee, ombudsperson for the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory and served two terms as scientific director for the Brazilian Materials Research Society, before assuming the role of president in 2020.

Professor Quarraisha Abdool Karim is an infectious disease epidemiologist whose primary research focuses on understanding the evolving HIV epidemic in South Africa and preventing HIV in women.

She is the Scientific Director of CAPRISA and Pro-Vice Chancellor for African Health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, and a Professor in Clinical Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, USA. She is a Fellow of The World Academy of Science; African Academy of Science; Academy of Science of South Africa, Royal Society of South Africa, and elected Member of the US National Academy of Medicine.

She was awarded the inaugural VinFuture Special Prize for Innovators from Developing Countries, in recognition of her ground-breaking research on HIV prevention.

Professor Ermias Kebreab is Associate Dean for Global Engagement in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, as well as Director of the World Food Center. He is a renowned scholar and skilled administrator with extensive experience in sustainable agriculture and animal science.

Professor Kebreab is the Sesnon Endowed Chair in the Department of Animal Science. He has conducted extensive research in developing strategies for using feed additives to reduce methane emissions from livestock and has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications.

He is the Chair of the United Nations FAO Technical Working Group on Feed Additives, a Committee Member for the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Panel on Anthropogenic Methane Emissions in the United States, and also serves on the NAS Committee for Nutrient Requirements of Dairy Cattle. He is a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2019, “Emissions from Livestock and Manure Management.”

Prof. Thuc-Quyen Nguyen is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She joined the faculty of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at UCSB in summer 2004. Prior to that, she was a research associate in the Department of Chemistry and the Nano Center at Columbia University, working with Professors Louis Brus and Colin Nuckolls on molecular self-assembly, nanoscale characterization and devices. She also spent time at the IBM Research Center at T. J. Watson (Yorktown Heights, NY) working with Richard Martel and Phaedon Avouris on molecular electronics.

Her current research interests are electronic properties of conjugated polyelectrolytes, interfaces in optoelectronic devices, charge generation and transport in organic semiconductors, new materials for organic solar cell applications, molecular self-assemblies, materials processing, nanoscale characterization of organic solar cells, and device physics.

Prof. Thuc-Quyen Nguyen is among the Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Materials Science and Cross-Field by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics. In addition, she has received numerous prestigious honors and awards, including: The 2015-2019 World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds; The 2019 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; The 2019 Hall of Fame – Advanced Materials; The 2016 Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry; The 2015 Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Award; and many more.