Prof. Mark Lawrence is a scientific director at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany. His work connects science, policy and other societal sectors to co-develop solutions for the grand challenges of the Anthropocene, with a main focus on the closely-related issues of air pollution and climate change, including assessing the potentials and risks of climate geoengineering. His aim is to inspire the implementation of sustainable solutions, including developing an understanding of how such transformations can possibly be fostered by greater mindfulness, especially of our individual and collective mindsets.
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 as an Honorary Professor at the University of Potsdam.
Prof. Lawrence is author or co-author of over 150 peer-reviewed publications. He has led various international projects, has served on the editorial and advisory boards of various journals, and is on several international committees, including having been co-chair of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry program (IGAC) from 2015-2018.
I am trained as a physicist and as an Earth and atmospheric scientist (and hold a professorship in geoecology), but now have the privilege of being a scientific director at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany. My work there connects science, policy and other societal sectors to co-develop solutions for the grand challenges of the Anthropocene, with a main focus on the closely-related issues of air pollution and climate change, including assessing the potentials and risks of climate geoengineering. In this setting, what especially drives me is the ambitious goal to inspire the implementation of sustainable solutions, including developing an understanding of how such transformations can possibly be fostered by greater mindfulness, especially of our individual and collective mindsets.
Inspiration requires communication (often even going beyond verbal and written). I have long been interested in science communication, in many different formats, such as how to effectively communicate scientific results among interdisciplinary and early career scientific audiences, and how to reach broader non-scientist audiences. Climanosco offers a bold new concept and format for science communication, combining the best of scientific robustness with an extreme degree of accessibility for non-scientist audiences. I am very pleased to be supporting its efforts in various ways, for example by helping to strengthen its connection to the community that is developing transdisciplinary and co-creative research methods, for whom Climanosco – and perhaps other journals following this model for other topics (e.g., digitalization) – could be a valuable venue for publication.