Schellnhuber joins Santa Fe Institute

03/08/2010 - Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), has been appointed to the position of External Professor of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI). The election to the external faculty recognizes Schellnhubers “many contributions to science and the SFI research effort”. At the US institution a transdisciplinary research community, working in the field of complexity science, investigates physical, computational, biological, and social systems. The term of the appointment is January 2010 through June 2013.
Schellnhuber joins Santa Fe Institute

Schellnhuber is invited to “become actively involved in the many diverse aspects of SFI’s intellectual life”. As External Professor he can become a member of the Science Steering Committee and organise or join working groups and workshops. External Faculty are asked to make short- or long-term visits to SFI for research and collaboration and to report on their SFI activities.

Research at the SFI covers diverse issues ranging from global climate change to stock market behaviour and biodiversity patterns preceding an ecosystem’s collapse. The SFI’s aim is “to discover, comprehend, and communicate the common fundamental principles in complex systems that underlie many of the most profound problems facing science and society today”. Early in its history the SFI attracted scientists as renowned as the Nobel Laureates in physics, Murray Gell-Mann and Philip Anderson, and the Nobel Laureate in economic sciences, Kenneth Arrow.

Schellnhuber will lecture at the 2010 Global Sustainability Summer School of the SFI, starting in July. Collaborating with the fellow physicist and SFI professor J. Doyne Farmer, his research at the SFI will further explore global sustainability as an emerging field of complexity science. Schellnhuber will continue his work as Director of PIK and Chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change throughout the term of the appointment.

Further reading:

The Santa Fe Institute
http://www.santafe.edu

2010 Global Sustainability Summer School
http://www.santafe.edu/education/schools/global-sustainability/gsss10