Committee Members

Committee Members

Ex-Officio

• Gordon McBean (President-Elect)
• David Black (Secretary General)
• Steven Wilson (Executive Director)

Contact

• Vivien Lee (Assistant Science Officer)

Biographies of Members

Malegapuru William Makgoba (Chair)

Vice-President for Scientific Planning and Review

Born in Sekhukhuneland in 1952, Professor Makgoba obtained his M.B. and Ch.B. degrees from the former University of Natal in 1976 with merit in Medicine, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Human Immunogenetics from Oxford University in 1983. A Fellow of the Royal Physicians of London and a Foreign Associate Member of the US National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, Prof Makgoba is an internationally-recognised molecular immunologist. Prof Makgoba has made ground-breaking contributions to scientific knowledge in his field. He was the first black South African to be selected to the prestigious National Institute of Health’s Fogarty Visiting Programme in the late 1980s. Working with Drs. Martin Sanders and Stephen Shaw and others at the National Cancer Institute, “were among the first to appreciate the importance of lymphocyte adhesion” and their pioneering discoveries profoundly influenced the disciplines of immunology and cell biology.

Detailed information

Juan A. ASENJO

Chile 

Juan A. Asenjo is a chemical engineer from the University of Chile and he obtained his PhD from University College London in 1978. He obtained the National Science Prize in 2004 and is President of the Chilean Academy of Sciences. His research work in the Biotechnology field is shown by 195 international scientific publications, 6 international patents and 4 books edited. He has supervised a large number of PhD students (49) in the USA, England and Chile and has had 15 postdoctoral fellows. He was Associate Professor and Director of the Biochemical Engineering Laboratory at Columbia University (New York, 1980-1987) and created such a laboratory in the University of Reading (Reader) in England (1986-1995). He is a member of the Editorial Committee of 7 international scientific journals in biotechnology and bioengineering. He has been Chairman of several international Congresses (France, England) and of the 12^th International Biotechnology Symposium (2004) which is the leading event in the field and it is the only time it has been held in Latinamerica. His former students are Professors and Researchers in Universities and Research Centres all around the world (Cornell, Iowa State, Rice, University College London, Campinas and IPT, Guanxi Univ., Porto, Foster Wheeler, Smith, Kline Beecham, Amgen, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Wyeth, Procter and Gamble, Novo Nordisk, Antofagasta Univ., La Frontera and U. of Chile).   He is an active member of the Executive Committee of IANAS (InterAmerican Network of Academies of Science) and of the CSPR (Comm. for Scientific Planning) of ICSU (Int. Council for Science) based in Paris and also Member of the Executive Committee of IAP (InterAcademy Panel, with more than 100 National Science Academies worldwide).

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Tom BEER

Australia

Tom Beer, D.Sc., Ph.D. is a Chief Research Scientist in CSIRO, the Australian Government Scientific Research Agency and the Leader of the Climate Variability and Change Research Program for  the  Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR), a partnership between the CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. He is Immediate Past President of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), an ICSU constituent, and was the Founding Chair of the IUGG Commission on Geophysical Risk and Sustainability. He is an international expert on environmental risk, including greenhouse gas and air quality issues and particularly their application to transport and fuels.  He was part of the team that won the CSIRO Chairman’s medal in 2000 with his component being the life-cycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions from hybrid electric vehicles.

Dr Beer is a Fellow of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.  He chaired the meeting at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences that, in June 2002, adopted the Budapest Manifesto on Risk Science and Sustainability (http://www.iugg.org/publications/reports/budapest.pdf).  During 1995 he was Science Adviser to the Environment Protection Agency in Canberra and undertook a risk review of national environmental priorities. Subsequently, Dr Beer undertook two of the preparatory studies for the National Environment Protection Measure for Ambient Air Quality.  He was a lead author for the Atmosphere Theme Report of the Australian 2001 and 2006 State of the Environment reports. He was a member of the IPCC Expert Group on Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Waste, and also a lead author for the chapter on waste in the IPCC Special Report on Technology Transfer. The IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

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Lidia M.R.A. BRITO 

Mozambique

Lidia Brito, holds a degree in Forest Engineering by UEM (Mozambique) and M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Forest Sciences from CSU (USA). As the first Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology of Mozambique (2000–2005) and Deputy Rector of UEM (1998-2000) she accumulated extensive experience in the fields of Higher Education, Science and Technology, ICT and innovation policies and programs. Currently she teaches Wood Science at UEM and she serves in several Board and Councils, such as UNU Council, IHE-UNESCO Board, SciDev Board of Trustees, of GeSci Board, African Forest Forum Governing Council, among others.

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Valéria CSEPE 

Hungary

Valéria Csépe got her degree in psychology at the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in 1976. She started to work as young researcher in the Institute of Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) and is active as principal investigator in the same institute, having the name of Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, t Research Center of Natural Sciences of HAS. Her main research interest included basic auditory perception, auditory event analysis, pre-cognitive and cognitive processes. In 1990 she started her research scholarship as Humboldt scholar at the University of Münster. She worked in an international team studying the human acoustic perception by using electroencephalography and magneto-encephalography. After returning back to Budapest she re-organized the human electrophysiological laboratory where she started a new line of basic and clinical research. In 2000 she established a new research group on  Developmental Psychophysiology where she and her young coworkers started the systematic studies on the development of speech perception, language, reading, number processing, mental calculation and music.

She is professor of cognitive psychology since 2005,  head of the Cognitive Psychology PhD Program of the ELTE Doctoral School of Psychology and lecturer of the Psycholinguistics and Neuroscience Program of the Zagreb University. She has more than 200 publications that include journal articles, monographs, edited books, book chapters and conference papers in English and Hungarian. She is member of many national and international scientific organizations and editorial boards of scientific journals. She has been decorated with the Knight’s Cross Order and with different awards for outstanding scientific achievement.

She is corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and was elected in 2008, reelected in 2011 as deputy secretary general of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

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Cheryl de la REY 

South Africa

Prof Cheryl de la Rey is the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Pretoria. Her previous executive positions include being the Chief Executive Officer of the Council on Higher Education, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cape Town and Executive Director at the National Research Foundation. She completed her Bachelor of Arts, Honours and Master's degrees at the University of Natal (now Kwazulu-Natal) and her PhD at the University of Cape Town. She has published books and several journal articles in her discipline, Psychology.  Professor De la Rey is registered as a Psychologist by the Health Professions Council of South Africa, is a fellow of the Psychological Association of South Africa and a fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa.

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Vijay Prasad DIMRI 

India 

Prof. V. P. Dimri is Distinguished Scientist of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) working at National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI), Hyderabad, India. He served as the Director of the NGRI from October 2001 to February 2010. Under his leadership as the Director, NGRI's achievements were significant in geosciences. NGRI is ranked No.1 in the research output among the geosciences institutions in the country (June 2006, NISCAIR, New Delhi). NGRI was placed among the top 1% institutions in the world in term of citation according to the analysis carried out by the SCOPUS 2007.

Dr. Dimri has more than 125 research publications in referred journals. He has authored two books entitled “Deconvolution and Inverse Theory (1992)” and ‘Fractal Models in Exploration Geophysics (July, 2012)”  both by Elsevier. Also, he has edited four books (published by Springer, Balkema and others) and a monograph of American Geophysical Union (under publication 2012).

Dr. Dimri has been conferred with the highest civilian award ‘Padma Shri’ by the Govt. of India. He delivered prestigious ‘Sir Axford Lecture’ in Asia Oceania Geosciences Society. Dr. Dimri is first Asian to get Lorenz Award Lecture by American Geophysical Union in the field of non-linear geophysics. Among many other important awards conferred on him includes, Prof. G.P. Chatterjee award by Indian Science Congress, Outstanding Scientist Award by FAPCCI, Department of Ocean Development Award and National Mineral Award. Dr. Dimri is President, Indian Geophysical Union and former President, A.P.Akademi of sciences, Fellow of many learned academies and societies among which few are: Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), Indian National Science Academy (INSA), National Academy of Sciences (NASI), Andhra Pradesh Akademi of Sciences, Geological Society of India, and Honorary life fellow of Indian Society of Applied Geochemists.

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Christopher FIELD

U.S.A. 

Chris Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University, and Faculty Director of Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. Field’s research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale. He has, for two decades, led major experiments on responses of California grassland to multi-factor global change. Field has served on many national and international committees related to global ecology and climate change. In September, 2008, he was elected co-chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which recently produced (along with Working Group I) the IPCC Special Report on “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation”. He is a recipient of a Heinz Award, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Field received his PhD from Stanford in 1981 and has been at the Carnegie Institution for Science since 1984.

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Fumiko KASUGA

Japan 

Dr. Fumiko Kasuga received a Ph.D. degree in agricultural science from The University of Tokyo in 1988. She is specialized in the field of food safety, particularly in microbiological risk assessment of foodborne diseases and epidemiology. In 1989, she started her career as a researcher expertized in food safety at National Institute of Infectious Diseases, and currently is the director at National Institute of Health Sciences. She joined Science Council of Japan (SCJ) in 2005 as a Council Member. Since then, she has been engaged in the SCJ activities regarding Food Safety, Infectious Diseases, and Public Health; and also in international aspects, she has participated in those for International Union of Microbiological Society (IUMS), Science Council of Asia (SCA), and G8 Academies’ Meetings. Besides those, she has been taking part in deliberations for policy recommendations and reports of SCJ, including "Japan Perspective-Proposals: Safety and Risks". With such a background, in October 2011, she was appointed as Vice-President in charge of international activities of SCJ.

Her zealous activities cover not only scientific researches, but also the international involvements through organizations such as FAO, WHO, ICMSF (The International Commission on Microbiological Specification for Food) and JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) , through which she has been contributing to practical applications of science for society, regulatory science, and policies for science and technology.

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Stewart Lockie

Australia

Stewart Lockie is Head of the ANU School of Sociology and President of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Environment and Society. He is an environmental sociologist whose research addresses environmental governance and risk, the regulation and transfer of environmental and social values through commodity chains, the greening of consumption practices, and the social impacts of resource development.

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Yonglong Lü 

China

Dr. Yonglong Lü is currently the President of SCOPE; Science Advisory Board member of IUCN; Director General of Bureau of International Cooperation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); Professor and Chair in Environmental Management and Policy at Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, CAS. Prof. Lü has a wide range of research interests including sustainability science, systems ecology, ecological impacts of persistent toxic subtances, environmental management and policy, and strategic planning of science and technology development. He has published more than 140 papers in international and domestic peer reviewed journals, and authored or co-authored 15 books. His papers and books have been widely cited and appreciated with some of them listed as classical citations. Prof. Lü is a known environmental scientist. He has been a project leader/coordinator or chief scientist for some 40 national or international cooperative projects. He serves as an Associate Editor of Environmental Development, editorial board member of Environmental Innovation and Societal Transformation, Chemistry and Ecology and other peered journals, and has been invited to be a peer reviewer for 20 internationally known environmental journals such as Environmental Science and Technology, Environment International, Energy Policy, and Journal of Environmental Management. He has been invited by UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, APEC, ICSU, SCOPE, IAC and IIASA many times to make presentations or keynote speeches at international conferences or forums, and to visit some 40 countries for cooperative research and academic exchange. He has been involved in many scientific planning and review activities of ICSU,UNEP, IAP and IAC for promoting science and technology capacities in China and the world. Due to his achievements, Dr. Lü has obtained several awards and honours from the State Council of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences and other organizations he has worked with, including 2nd National Prize for Advancement of Science and Technology.

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Nebojsa Nakicenovic 

Austria 

Nebojsa Nakicenovic is Professor of Energy Economics at the Vienna University of Technology, Deputy Director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and Director of the Global Energy Assessment (GEA). He is also an Associate Editor of the International Journal on Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Member of Editorial Board of International Journal on Climate Policy, the International Journal of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the International Journal of Energy Sector Managemen., a Coordinating Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), Fourth Assessment Report, and Coordinating Lead Author of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Prof. Nakicenovic was a Coordinating Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), the Fourth Assessment Report, 2002 to 2007, Coordinating Lead Author of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2001- 2005, Director, Global Energy Perspectives, World Energy Council, 1993 to 1998, Convening Lead Author of the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 1993 to 1995, Convening Lead Author of the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios, 1997 to 2000, Lead Author of Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, 1999 to 2001, Convening Lead Author of the World Energy Assessment: Energy and the Challenge of Sustainability, 1999 to 2000, and Guest Professor at the Technical University of Graz, 1993-2003. Prof. Nakicenovic holds bachelor's and master's degrees in economics and computer science from Princeton University, New Jersey, USA and the University of Vienna, where he also completed his Ph.D. He also holds Honoris Causa Ph.D. degree in engineering from the Russian Academy of Sciences. Among Prof. Nakicenovic’s research interests are the long-term patterns of technological change, economic development and response to climate change and, in particular, the evolution of energy, mobility, information and communication technologies. Additional information can be found in Marquis Who's Who in Science and Engineering and Who's Who in the World. Curriculum vitae, list of publications is available on the IIASA website.

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Boshra B. SALEM

Egypt 

Dr Salem is Chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences at the Faculty of Science, University of Alexandria. She received her Ph. D. from the Alexandria University jointly with Imperial Collage University of London on Landuse Land cover changes in Arid Lands using Remote sensing. She spent time as a Post Doctor at the University of London working on Geographic Information Systems Applications, Environmental digital databases and at the University of Maryland, USA (1996) working on Electronic Environmental databases. Her major field of interest is Remote Sensing and GIS application on arid environments (Land degradation and desertification, land use/cover change detection.); Protected areas and Biosphere Reserves; Modeling of crop production in desert ecosystems; Strategic Environment Assessments and EIA; Electronic Databases and networking; Alternative energy sources (solar). Dr. Salem is an active member of many international Committees, which includes the British Ecological Society (BES); Joint Jury of the UNESCO Science Prize for development and Javed Husain Prize for Young Scientists. She is National Coordinator of “Ground Water and Human Security Project, United Nations University, Bonn and President of "Ecosystems and Human Development Association (EHDA)". She has won many international Prizes for her work.

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Hubert SAVENIJE

Netherlands 

Prof. Savenije studied at the Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands, where he obtained his MSc in 1977 in Hydrology. As a young graduate hydrologist he worked for six years in Mozambique where he developed a theory on salt intrusion in estuaries and studied the hydrology of international rivers.

From 1985-1990 he worked as an international consultant mostly in Asia and Africa. He joined academia in 1990 to complete his PhD in 1992. In 1994 he was appointed Professor of Water Resources Management at the IHE (now UNESCO-IHE, Institute for Water Education) in Delft, the Netherlands. Since 1999, he is Professor of Hydrology at the Delft University of Technology, where he is the head of the Water Resources Section.

In 2008 he received the Henry Darcy Medal of the European Geosciences Union for outstanding contributions to Hydrology and Water Resources Management.
In 2010 he received the 'Leermeesterprijs' (Master Award) of the TU Delft, which is an annual award for the most distinguished teacher.

Prof. Savenije has published widely in the fields of hydrology, estuary hydraulics and water resource management. Recently he published a book on "Salinity and Tides in Alluvial Estuaries".  He is chief executive editor of Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS) and editor in chief of Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. He is the incoming President of IAHS (the International Association for Hydrological Sciences) and was President of Hydrological Sciences of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), and Past-President of the International Commission on Water Resources Systems of IAHS. He has organised several regional and international water conferences, and has wide-ranging experience in Africa, Asia and South America.

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Martin VISBECK 

Germany 

Martin Visbeck received his Ph.D from Kiel University in Physical Oceanography on research about deep ocean convection in 1993. During a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT his research interest focused on the interaction between ocean eddies and deep convection regions and their respective heat and density transports. When he was a Research Scientist at LDEO and Associate Professor at Columbia University, New York, his interest shifted to more general aspects of the ocean’s role in the climate system including work on the North Atlantic Oscillation and Deep Water formation off Antarctica. Since October 2004 he has held the chair in Physical Oceanography at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University in Kiel. He currently works at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel and at Kiel University. His current research is concerned with ocean and climate variability and change with particular emphasis on the circulation of the Subpolar North Atlantic, climate-biogeochemical interactions in the tropical ocean, observations of ocean circulation and mixing using modern robotic platforms including profiling floats and gliders, and development of ocean observatories for long-term observations in the water column.

Prof. Visbeck has served on several national and international committees. He is Speaker of the Kiel Cluster of Excellence "The Future Ocean".

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