Scientists in different roles – from research to activism
- Keynote (Ω)
- Keynote (Ω)
Sonia Seneviratne | ETH Zürich, Julia Steinberger | UNIL
Presentation Sonia Seneviratne
Presentation Julia Steinberger
This keynote session aims to explore the role of scientists in political discourse. We have invited two prominent climate researchers, Sonia I. Seneviratne and Julia Steinberger, to share the challenges they encounter daily and to offer advice to fellow researchers and science communicators. The audience will have an opportunity to pose questions anonymously through the online tool, slido.
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Sonia I. Seneviratne
Sonia I. Seneviratne is Professor for Land-Climate Dynamics at ETH Zurich. Her research focuses on climate extremes and land-climate interactions. She investigates processes leading to droughts and heatwaves, the impact of land processes and land cover changes on regional climate, and their changes with global warming. In 2003 she completed her PhD in Climate science at ETH Zurich. She was then a visiting researcher at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (2003- 2004) in Greenbelt, Maryland (USA). After her return to ETH Zurich as a senior scientist, she became an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Sciences in 2007, advancing to Associate Professor in 2013 and Full Professor in 2016. Sonia Seneviratne has published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles. She has received several awards for her research. Prof. Sonia Seneviratne was recently a lead author of the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C global warming (2017-2018) and a coordinating lead author of the 6th assessment report of the IPCC (2018-2021).
Julia Steinberger
Professor Julia Steinberger researches Ecological Economics at the University of Lausanne. After a PhD in experimental physics, Professor Steinberger moved to the interdisciplinary areas of industrial ecology and ecological economics, first as a postdoc at the universities of Lausanne and Zurich, then in Vienna at the Institute of Social Ecology, and subsequently as a professor at the University of Leeds in the UK. Her research examines the connections between resource use (energy and materials, greenhouse gas emissions) and societal performance (economic activity and human wellbeing). From 2017 to 2022, she was the recipient of a Leverhulme Research Leadership Award for her research project ‘Living Well Within Limits’, investigating how universal human well-being might be achieved within planetary boundaries. Since 2023, she co-leads the EU ERC Synergy grant “REAL- A Post-Growth Deal” on post-growth societies. She is Lead Author for the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report with Working Group 3.