International Science Advisory Council

The International Scientific Advisory Council (ISAC) is a body of internationally leading researchers providing strategic advice and guidance on the scientific development and direction of the Stockholm Resilience Centre

The composition and membership of the council is formally decided by the SRC board. Members are committed to a three-year period with possibility for re-election. Current members are:

Elena Bennett (Chair)

MCGILL UNIVERSITY

Dr. Bennett is an associate professor at McGill School of Environment. Her research revolves around interests in understanding and managing ecosystem services. She is interested in how the types of ecosystem services interact across the landscape and how humans can manage landscapes to provide multiple ecosystems services. Her research also looks at the trade-offs between agricultural production and water quality and learning how people change Phosphorus (P) cycles through farming, trade, and other activities, and how this, in turn impacts water quality.

In-depth:
Elena Bennett reflects on what makes the Stockholm Resilience Centre unique and what it will take to stay that way

Frank Biermann

UTRECHT UNIVERSITY

Frank Biermann is a research professor of Global Sustainability Governance with the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He is an internationally leading scholar of global institutions and organizations in the sustainability domain. Biermann pioneered the ‘earth system’ governance paradigm in global change research in 2005 and was the founder and first chair (2008-2018) of the Earth System Governance Project, a leading global transdisciplinary research network of sustainability scholars. In 2024, Biermann was honored with the Volvo Environment Prize, ‘for defining new pathways for international environmental governance in a period of global change’. He is currently a Visiting Professor of Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University.

Eduardo S. Brondizio

INDIANA UNIVERSITY BLOOMINGTON

Eduardo Brondizio is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington and an elected member of the National Academies of Science. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor in Geography and Public and Environmental Affairs and directs the Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes (CASEL). His research focuses on environmental anthropology, particularly in the Amazon. For most of his career, he has studied small farmers and rural households in Eastern Amazonia, examining their interactions with markets, policies, social movements and environmental changes. Recently, his work has expanded to urbanization, and the governance of indigenous areas and conservation in the region.

Deliang Chen

TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY

Deliang Chen is a meteorologist by education and renowned climate researcher. He also has extensive experiences with science for policy. He is an elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (RSAS), the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, the World Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg, as well as a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. He has served on numerous international and national committees and boards, as well as advised various governmental, intergovernmental, and international non-governmental bodies including funding agencies. Recent examples include chair of the Nomination Committee of the Stockholm Water Prize and Chair of the Earth Science Division of the RSAS.

Hallie Eakin

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

Hallie Eakin is a Professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University and a Senior Global Futures Scientist. She is also affiliated with the School of Urban Planning and Geographical Sciences, the Urban Climate Research Center, and the Water Institute. Her research focuses on governance and social equity in both urban and rural socio-ecological systems. She studies household vulnerability, sustainable food systems, and adaptation to global change. Eakin's work also explores how risk is integrated into urban and rural planning, emphasizing the institutional and global factors shaping sustainability and resilience.

Jonas Ebbesson

STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY

Ebbesson is a professor in environmental law and a former dean of the faculty of law at Stockholm University. He is also a former member of the Stockholm Resilience Centre board and a long-time research affiliate to the centre.

In-depth:
What’s law got to do with it? Quite a lot if you ask Jonas Ebbesson, professor of environmental law and member of Stockholm Resilience Centre’s International Science Advisory Board

Christina Hicks

LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

Christina is an Environmental Social Scientist exploring how individuals and societies interact with nature, how these relationships influence social, environmental, and health outcomes, and how they shape sustainable livelihood choices. She is a professor in the Political Ecology group at Lancaster University’s Environment Centre. Her current research focuses on small-scale fisheries, investigating their contributions to nutrition, culture, and well-being, as well as their vulnerability to climate change. Hicks is also a member of the EAT-Lancet Commission, a global alliance of leading researchers in nutrition, health, sustainability, and policy.

Esteban Jobbágy

THE NATIONAL SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (CONICET)

Esteban Jobbágy is a Senior Researcher at CONICET and a specialist in terrestrial ecosystem ecology, hydrology, and land use change, with a focus on the Chaco-Pampa plains. His research explores how plants shape the abiotic world, particularly groundwater-ecosystem interactions and human influence on ecosystem processes. His work has been crucial in understanding and mitigating flooding and salinization in the Pampas. He has been a lead author in several IPCC reports and is currently a Fellow at SARAS Institute and Adjunct Professor at the University of Buenos Aires.

Danica Kragic

ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, SWEDEN

Danica Kragic is a professor at the School of Computer Science and Communication at the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH. She received MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University of Rijeka, Croatia in 1995 and PhD in Computer Science from KTH in 2001. She has been a visiting researcher at Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University and INRIA Rennes. She is the Director of the Centre for Autonomous Systems. Danica received the 2007 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award. She is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and Young Academy of Sweden.

Eric Lambin

UNIVERSITÉ CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN & STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Eric Lambin, a geographer and environmental scientist, divides his time between the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) and Stanford University, were he occupies the Ishiyama Provostial Professorship at the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and the Woods Institute for the Environment. His research tries to better understand causes and impacts of land use changes in different parts of the world.

Jane Lubchenco

OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

Lubchenco is a marine biologist and environmental scientist who has deep experience in the worlds of science, academia, public engagement and government. In 2021 she was appointed Deputy Director for Climate and Environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology. She served as the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and as part of President Barack Obama’s Science Team from 2009-2013. From 2014-2016, she was the first U.S. State Department Science Envoy for the Ocean, serving as a science diplomat to China, Indonesia, South Africa, Mauritius and the Seychelles.

Stephen Polasky

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Stephen Polasky is a Regents Professor and Fesler-Lampert Professor of Ecological/Environmental Economics at the Department of Applied Economics. His research focuses on issues at the intersection of ecology and economics and include the impacts of land use and land management on the provision and value of ecosystem services and natural capital, biodiversity conservation, sustainability, environmental regulation, renewable energy, and common property resources.

Marten Scheffer

WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY

Marten Scheffer is interested in unravelling the mechanisms that determine the stability and resilience of complex systems. Although much of his work has focused on ecosystems, he also worked with a range of scientists from other disciplines to address issues of stability and shifts in natural and social systems. Examples include the feedback between atmospheric carbon and the earth temperature, the collapse of ancient societies, inertia and shifts in public opinion.

Elizabeth Selig

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Elizabeth Selig is the deputy director of Center for Ocean Solutions. Her work focuses on analyzing how changes in ecosystem health will affect ecosystem services and human well-being, evaluating the success of management tools to effectively manage ocean resources, and developing integrated socio-ecological assessments of ocean health. She has more than ten years experience working with international organizations including Conservation International, where she was the Senior Director of Marine Science.

In-depth:
For Elizabeth Selig, making sure that research positively impacts society lies at the core of her work. Good thing, then, that she has become a member of the Centre’s new science advisory council

Rashid Sumaila

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Rashid Sumaila specializes in food security issues related to marine ecosystems; trade in fish and fisheries products, fisheries subsidies, illegal fishing; the economics of high and deep seas fisheries and marine governance; marine ecosystem valuation and modelling. He has extensive experience of interdisciplinary collaboration and is very active in the science, practice, policy interface collaborating with stakeholders from local to the highest international levels. Sumaila has been called upon to make presentation to the United Nations, to senior staff at the White House, and to other political and/or expert bodies around the world in dozens of countries and on all continents.

In-depth:
The centre’s international science advisory council welcomes Rashid Sumaila, one of the world’s most innovative oceans researchers

Elke Weber

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Elke Weber is a Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor at the Department of Psychology and Associate Director for Education at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. Weber works at the intersection of psychology and economics, Weber is an expert on behavioral models of judgment and decision making under risk and uncertainty.

In-depth:
Elke Weber, a Princeton professor and member of the centre’s science advisory board, knows a thing or two about the human brain and what it takes to get people to act

Frances Westley

UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO

Frances Westley is the former chair of the Stockholm Resilience Centre board. She is a renowned scholar and consultant in the areas of social innovation, strategies for sustainable development, strategic change, visionary leadership and inter-organizational collaboration. At the University of Waterloo, she leads a research team dedicated to understanding social innovation, and has designed both graduate and undergraduate curricula in social innovation.

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