New Professorship at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

New Professorship at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Wolfgang Lucht, Earth System Scientist at the Potsdam Institute (PIK) has been appointed a Research (apl) Professor of „Biosphere Dynamics and Earth System Research” at the Institute of Geoecology at Potsdam University.

Wolfgang Lucht, born in 1964 in Mainz, has been with PIK’s department of “Global Change and Natural Systems” since 1999 and already been teaching at the Institute of Geoecology at Potsdam University for the last two years. His official appointment as a Research Professor on November 17 will give additional weight to his work.

Wolfgang Lucht gained his Ph.D. in physics at Kiel University in 1993, working on the physics of the solar system. Today his research focus is the study of changes in Earth’s vegetation cover due to climate change and evolving human use. Observational data (particularly from space) and mathematical models are of equal importance for this research. In this work he benefits from his five-year research experience at Boston University’s Center for Remote Sensing (USA).

For several years, Lucht’s internationally acclaimed investigations have received support from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research through a “Young Investigators” grant.

Since 2003 Lucht also heads PIK’s „Biosphere“ Research Group, in which currently five doctoral students and two other scientists investigate how the vegetation cover of the planet reacts to different forms of stress and what its potential makeup in the future may be. “Computer models are necessary if we are to investigate the future,” explains Professor Lucht, “particularly when changing use by humans is taken into account.”

 
Further information see:

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~wlucht

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Lucht, Wolfgang.Lucht@pik-potsdam.de, Tel. 0331/288-2533