Cluster of Excellence Elects New Speaker Team

24 September 2014, by Franziska Neigenfind

Photo: UHH/CEN

The new Speaker team: Prof. Eva-Maria Pfeiffer, Prof. Anita Engels, Prof. Detlef Stammer (l.t.r.)

Last Friday, the sociologist Prof. Anita Engels was elected the new Chair for the Cluster of Excellence for climate research, CliSAP. Professor of Oceanography Detlef Stammer will ...

Last Friday, the sociologist Prof. Anita Engels was elected the new Chair for the Cluster of Excellence for climate research, CliSAP. Professor of Oceanography Detlef Stammer will remain a Deputy Chair, and will now be joined by newly elected Deputy Chair Eva-Maria Pfeiffer, a Professor of Soil Science.

“The new Speaker team will help to cement the long-term process of establishing the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN) as a cross-faculty research center,” summarizes Detlef Stammer. As Director of the CEN and reelected Deputy Chair of CliSAP he is an important contact partner when it comes to the future prospects of climate research at the University. Retrospectively, he states: “Our successful applications for the title ‘Cluster of Excellence’ in 2007 and 2012 have given us considerable momentum. As a result of the cooperation of the partners in the Cluster, Climate research in the Hamburg region and at the University has now become more networked and transparent. This process, which CliSAP initiated, is one we will continue to push forward,” explains Stammer.

The new Speaker team will concentrate on three main areas. As Anita Engels explains, “The core of CliSAP has always been and will remain climate research. The necessary bridge-building between the natural and social sciences is a practice we will continue and strengthen.” A second focus is on intensifying collaboration with extra-university partners like the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and the Helmholtz Zentrum Geesthacht. “As the Speaker team we also need to rise to the challenge of plotting a course for the future. In that context, we are already preparing an interim report on the state of the Cluster,” announced Engels. The Cluster will continue to be financially supported by the state and federal government and the University until November 2017. CliSAP’s university-based activities will continue at the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN).

Over the course of the next three years, Eva-Maria Pfeiffer will promote geoscientific research on the roots and effects of climate change at CliSAP and the CEN. “That also includes solid educational offers in all CliSAP-relevant disciplines, from Geology and Meteorology to Sociology,” emphasizes Pfeiffer. As such, a research-driven and clearly structured graduate program like that offered at CliSAP’s School of Integrated Climate System Science (SICSS) is of particular value.

After seven years, incumbent Chair Prof. Martin Claußen chose not to run for reelection. Instead he will continue to support CliSAP as a Principal Investigator and as a member of its Scientific Steering Committee, where he will especially focus on the cooperation between the University and its external partners. According to Anita Engels: “Martin Claußen has successfully led the Cluster of Excellence through the application process for the state and federal governments’ Excellence Initiative twice. I’d like to thank him for his unfailing commitment and for being such an open-hearted colleague – both of which I personally find very inspiring, and a great motivation for our future work on the Speaker team.”