Paul Berkman

Oceanographer, Polar Explorer, Entrepreneur, Global Thought Leader

Professor Berkman is an internationally-renown scientist, explorer, educator and 

author who has made significant contributions to the sustainable development of our world during the past three decades.  He is especially motivated to establish connections between science, policy and information technology to promote cooperation and prevent discord for good governance of regions beyond sovereign jurisdictions – which account for nearly 70% of the Earth.  Paul was a visiting professor at the University of California at the age of 24, after wintering in Antarctica on a SCUBA research expedition the previous year, and travelled to all seven continents before the age of 30.  He was former Head of the Arctic Ocean Geopolitics Programme at the University of Cambridge and a Research Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara.  In addition, Professor Berkman is the founder and sole-owner of EvREsearch LTD, Chief Executive of DigIn (Digital Integration Technology Limited) and Chair of the Foundation for the Good Governance of International Spaces.  Prof. Berkman also is the coordinator of a multi-year international government-funded project on Holistic Integration for Arctic Coastal-Marine Sustainability. He convened and chaired the Antarctic Treaty Summit in Washington, DC on the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty, involving 40 sponsoring institutions from around the world along with a keynote address from the United Nations Secretary-General as well as a joint resolution adopted with unanimous consent in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.  He also convened the first NATO workshop on Arctic security to involve Russian co-directorship, stimulating subsequent presentations to the Norwegian Parliament, NATO Maritime Command and other institutions.  Professor Berkman serves as an expert consultant and principal investigator on diverse international projects, sharing insights directly with Heads of State and other government leaders as well as captains of industry.  He is interviewed regularly by newspapers and magazines as well as by radio and television.  He has an extensive record of interdisciplinary publication and among his books are: Environmental Security in the Arctic Ocean (Springer, 2012); Science Diplomacy: Antarctica, Science and the Governance of International Spaces (Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2011); Environmental Security in the Arctic Ocean: Promoting Cooperation and Preventing Conflict (Berkman, Routledge, 2010); and Science into Policy: Global Lessons from Antarctica (Academic Press, 2002).  For his contributions, Prof. Berkman has received the: Antarctic Service Medal from the United States Congress; NASA Faculty Fellowship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology; Byrd Fellowship at Ohio State University; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship at the National Institute of Polar Research in Japan; Erskine Fellowship in the Gateway Antarctica, University of Canterbury in New Zealand; and Fulbright Distinguished Scholarship at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.  Paul has a master’s degree and doctorate in biological oceanography from the University of Rhode Island, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow.  In 2011, he was elected to the Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research.  Paul is happily married with two daughters.

Wu Guoxiong

Chinese Academy of Sciences, former member of the ICSU Executive Board

Prof. Guoxiong Wu was born in Canton, China in 1943. He received his Ph.D. in meteorology from Imperial College of Science and Technology, London University in 1983. He served as Director of Key Laboratory of Numerical Experiment for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (LASG), Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), CAS from 1993 to 2000.

He returned to China and joined LASG/IAP in 1985 and has been a professor till now. He worked as weather forecast engineer at the Central Weather Observatory of Northwest China from 1967 to 1978, a visiting scientist at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) from 1983 to 1984, and Senior visiting Research Professor at Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) of Princeton University from 1989 to 1991. He is one of the world top meteorologists who possess both solid mathematical and physical bases, and rich practical experiences. In 1997, he was elected the Academician of CAS and Life Tenure Professor.

Prof. Wu’s research involves weather and climate dynamics, including numerical modeling and data diagnosis. He has developed a complete form of vertical vorticity tendency equation in which the impacts of internal thermal structure of the atmosphere and external forcing have all been included. Based on this and the conservation of Ertel potential vorticity, he developed the theory of Slantwise Vorticity Development (SVD) to explain the explosive development of weather systems such as the Southwest Vortex and torrential rain, and a series of theory for the development of subtropical anticyclone and the co-existence of subtropical monsoon and desert. He promoted the study of the Chinese meteorologists on the impacts of Tibetan Plateau on weather and climate, particularly on the onsets of the Asian summer monsoon, and for the first time pointed out that the onsets are divided into three stages. He proved that due to the strong baroclinity and geostrophy, air-sea interaction in mid- and high-latitudes possesses different characteristics compared with that in tropics. By using numerical modeling, Prof. Wu and his colleagues simulated the spatial and temporal distributions of typhoon, and found the mechanism linking the annual typhoon frequency to ENSO, which has been internationally recognized. Prof. Wu’s research has resulted in more than 200 peer-reviewed papers published. He has given a large number of invited talks across the world.

Over the past 20 years, Prof. Wu has been actively involved in the international climate community. Some of his high level appointments in professional societies and international journals include: president of International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS) from 2007-2011, Officer of WMO/ICO/ICSU Joint Science Committee (JSC), World Climate Research Program (WCRP) from 2005-2010, and Editor of Climate Dynamics since 2000, etc. He has been PI of many major climate related projects in China and he is currently the Chairman of the Science Steering Group of the National Key Science Research Program on Global Change funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China.

Bina Agarwal

Future Earth Science Commitee member

Bina Agarwal is Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the University of Manchester. Prior to this she was Professor of Economics and Director of the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi. She is currently a member of the Future Earth Science Committee.
 
Educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Delhi, Agarwal has held many distinguished positions wordwide, including at Harvard, Princeton, Minnesota, and the NYU School of Law. She has been President of the International Society for Ecological Economics; Vice-President of the International Economic Association; President of the International Association for Feminist Economics; and a member of the Commission for the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, chaired by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. She was also a member of the Programme for Ecosystems Change and Society; the UN Committee for Development Policy; and the former Indian Prime Minister’s National Council for Land Reforms.
 
Agarwal's substantial publications on the environment; food security; land and livelihoods; the political economy of gender; and poverty and inequality, include the multiple award-winning book: A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (Cambridge University Press 1994) and the more recent Gender and Green Governance (Oxford University Press 2010, 2013).
 
In 2008 she received a Padma Shri from the President of India for her contributions to the field of education; and in 2010 she was awarded the Leontief Prize from Tufts University ‘for advancing the frontiers of economic thought.’ see also www.binaagarwal.com

Theodora Bloom

British Medical Journal

Theodora Bloom has been executive editor of The BMJ since June 2014.

She has a PhD in developmental cell biology from the University of Cambridge and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, researching cell-cycle regulation. She moved into publishing as an editor on the biology team at Nature, and in 1992 joined the fledgling journal Current Biology. After a number of years helping to develop Current Biology and its siblings Structure and Chemistry & Biology, Theo joined the beginnings of the open access movement. As the founding editor of Genome Biology she was closely involved in the birth of the commercial open access publisher BioMed Central, where she remained for several years, ultimately as editorial director for biology. After a spell as a freelance publishing consultant working with a variety of clients, she joined the non-profit open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS) in 2008, first as chief editor of PLOS Biology and later as biology editorial director with additional responsibility for PLOS Computational Biology and PLOS Genetics. She also took the lead for PLOS on issues around data access and availability. She serves on the boards of NAM Publications (www.aidsmap.com), Dryad digital repository (www.datadryad.org), and of EMBL-EBI Literature Services (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/services/literature). At The BMJ her responsibilities include ethical and policy matters, and dealing with complaints.