Interview
- What made you decide to get involved with the RESCUE foresight initiative?
The opportunity to develop a strategic vision to break down the individual and institutional barriers that hamper collaboration across Europe between the physical, natural, medical and social sciences and humanities in European global change research together with engaged scientists and other stakeholders was my primary driver for getting involved. Meeting with and expanding my network of like-minded European colleagues is a fantastic opportunity given my background. I have already experienced writing new research proposals and publications together with people that I would likely not have met, had it not been for RESCUE and its approach for assembling its foresight team. Creation of a good framework will also lend itself to other collaborative fields such as for example, synthetic biology and financial modelling.
- In your field, what are the most urgent issues at stake for our unstable Earth?
There are numerous issues within the science of my field (atmospheric chemistry, climate and global processes) such as how to improve the spatial and temporal understanding of global processes or investigating or discovering other global processes. For example there is much urgent scientific exploration needed to further illuminate the connection between the atmosphere and the solid Earth. How to improve the predictive capability of the climate models, minimizing the error propagated in them, and improving the decision framework that arises from their results is also important. The energy mix, development of countries...I could go on and on. All of these would be followed by urgent needs to evaluate how to best communicate, visualize and operationalize climate science results in mitigation and adaptation strategies so that these are seen as supplementary to other needs and opportunities by individuals, communities, firms and nations. There are additional urgent issues, such as recruiting and retaining the next generation of natural and interdisciplinary scientists, creating jobs for those already trained and those finished their education in the future and improving the opportunities for underrepresented minorities in terms of gender, nationality and social levels. It is also urgent to use our knowledge to contribute to societal prosperity through increasing collaboration with industry and advancing innovative solutions for corporations and society, but not at the cost of basic or publicly funded free research. Lastly, with respect to the changing climate, research in our field must provide the framework that makes sense to act upon regardless of the status of international agreements; as the latest UNFCC conference in Copenhagen demonstrated how challenging a binding international agreement is to achieve, monitor and enforce.
- What are your ambitions for how RESCUE could help address these challenges – how could it help in the short and long term?
My ambitions is that the strategy we propose will help address the grand challenges by identifying strengths to achieve success in the opportunities in global change research. In doing so, this effort will also identify gaps, and thus necessary areas of research opportunities in "mono-disciplinary" core fields. In the short term, the strategy should be so compelling that national and international funding organizations will programme funds to enable successful execution of it, or at least lead to further dialog and debate. My personal ambition is of course, to see action as a result of this dialog. More countries, for example, might create an interdisciplinary research panel, as opposed to "just" classic expert panels as a part of their national science funding organisations. In the long-term, the foundation will be laid for addressing some of the grand challenges related to global environmental change, and thus the grand opportunities. Meeting these opportunities will not only help the pan-European region, but will have global impact. The innovation from theses opportunities will help Europe maintain and create more lead markets within for example renewable energy, climate change adaptation/mitigation research and the information systems. By addressing the challenges, we will create opportunities.
- How do you interpret the word “collaboration” in the title of the RESCUE Working Group you are chairing?
Sir Isaac Newton said: "If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". This to me is an excellent summary of the value of collaboration. Using this analogy, I believe that by standing together across disciplines, we have the opportunity to be "taller" than we are as individual scientists in our field, and therefore hopefully have a more positive impact. As a team charged with a foresight exercise, we need to see "further". The urgent issues I spoke of above, require great efforts and the best way to map and address many of them are in units that collectively are able to investigate questions larger than "just" the sum of the individual scientists. Thus, the best method is via the synergy achieved in collaboration. When I look at the talent assembled by RESCUE and in the “Collaboration” Working Group. I am so humbled to be a part of the process.
- What do you think is the main challenge for your Working Group?
My working group’s main challenge is that to achieve excellent synergy we must identify areas of collective strengths. This approach takes time and getting to know one-another. I was appointed, and we were completely assembled after the launching conference, so many of us have simply not met one another or had the opportunity to have a dialog together as a group. While virtual participation enables access to the individual expertise of the members, I feel that strength and synergy will be brought out in the group once we are all assembled. In the meantime, we will maximize remote communication and interaction. If we can do this successfully, we can demonstrate to creative units operating in global teams that co-location and socialization is perhaps not as important as we are brought up to believe. As many multinational firms and other organizations are already successfully doing this, perhaps this is not too much of a reach.
- How have your experiences in North America contributed to your view on European global change research?
Experiences are just a different framework for seeing European global change research. I am trained as a researcher in Europe. I do believe however, that my culture has many strengths: exploration, adventure, creativity and entrepreneurship to name a few. Many of these are manifested in North America, in some of the finest research and learning environments in the world - despite their (relatively) "young" age as compared to European institutions. I meet many European scientists where I get the impression that the barriers to them achieving great success are unfortunately rooted in institutional conservatism. I find however, that my experience, networks and views are not unique in my group. Most (if not all) of my European colleagues have trans-Atlantic experience and/or experience in other regions of the world as well as international networks. The strength of the group is to see European global change research objectively through our own "lenses" while knowing that there are always things to be learned from our colleagues around the world, but also knowing that a strength in one part of the world, such as North America will not necessarily translate to a strong point in Europe. Europeans are showing through initiatives such as this that they are finding their own path, one that works for them, and one that is inclusive and open to be enriched by other ideas and experience. This path is, by the way, just as enriched by pan-European thought.
