WIMEK International Advisory Board (IAB)

The main task of the International Advisory Board is to give advice and critical guidance on strategic issues concerning the research and the educational programme of the Graduate School and to evaluate its performance.

The IAB consists of four leading international scientists representing the various scientific fields of WIMEK.

Chair: Prof. Harold Mathijs van Es (see Soil Sciences Cluster)

Cluster Environmental Technology and Microbiology (ETE-MIB)

  • Dr Amelia-Elena Rotaru (Professor of Microbial Physiology & Biochemistry; University of Southern Denmark, Denmark)

Cluster Water, Climate and Society (CWS)

  • Prof. Dr Anne Verhoef (Professor of Soil Physics and Micrometeorology, University of Reading, UK)
  • Prof. Peter Mollinga (Centre for Development, Environment and Policy & Centre for Water and Development, University of London, UK)
  • Prof. Dr Claudia Pahl-Wostl (Full professor for resources management at the Institute for Environmental Systems Research (USF) University of Osnabrück, Germany)

Soil Sciences Cluster

Cluster Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning (LSP)

  • Prof. Martin Prominski (Professor of Designing Urban Landscapes, Faculty of Architecture and Landscape Sciences, Leibniz Universität, Hannover, Germany)

Mini CVs IAB member

Prof. Harold van Es

Harold van Es is a Professor of Soil Science and former Chair of the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Cornell University.  He received degrees from the University of Amsterdam, Iowa State University and North Carolina State University.  He was the 2016 President of the Soil Science Society of America and is also a Fellow of both the Soil Science Society of America and the American Society of Agronomy.  His broader interest is in soil and water management, specifically precision management of crop inputs, soil health, and space-time statistics.  He teaches an undergraduate course in sustainable soil management and a graduate course in space-time statistics.  He has published over 130 refereed papers, co-authored a widely-read book on soil health management, wrote numerous extension and proceedings articles, and advised 60 graduate students and postdocs.  His research has been conducted at locations in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and North America.  His team made internationally recognized contributions in design of field experiments and soil health, including an assessment and management framework. He is also lead inventor of Adapt-N, computational nitrogen management tool that was commercialized by a global crop nutrition company and recently won a $1M international prize. https://scs.cals.cornell.edu/people/harold-van-es/

Dr Amelia-Elena Rotaru

https://rotarulab.com/

Prof. Dr Anne Verhoef

Anne Verhoef is a full Professor of Soil Physics and Micrometeorology at the University of Reading, United Kingdom. She obtained her ‘Ingenieurs’ degree (combined BSc & MSc degree, 1984-1990) in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (specialisation Soil Science), and her PhD (1991-1995) degree in Meteorology, both from Wageningen (Agricultural) University. She has a broad interest in Environmental Sciences, including Soil Science, Hydrology, Climatology, Meteorology and Remote Sensing. She has extensive expertise in Land Surface Modelling (LSM) and experimental campaigns relating to water, heat, and gas transfer in soils, as well as to the land surface water-, energy- and carbon balance, over a range of geographies, including Africa, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Spain and the UK. She has a strong interest in the synergistic use of LSM, field observations and remote sensing data. Over the years, she has built up a large portfolio of research grants broadly in the context of water-, food- and energy security, and impacts of weather extremes (flooding, droughts, heatwaves) on land-atmosphere exchange. She is an executive board member of the International Soil Modelling Consortium – since 2017, and co-chairs the GEWEX (Global Energy and Water Cycle Exchanges) GLASS (Global Land Atmosphere System Study) panel – since 2020 of, where she guides international developments relating to land surface and hydrological modelling (e.g., in the context of IPCC model intercomparison projects).
https://www.reading.ac.uk/ges/staff/anne-verhoef

Prof. Peter Mollinga

Professor Peter Mollinga is a full professor of Development Studies, SOAS University of London, UK. His Masters in irrigation and PhD on the political economy of unequal water distribution in Indian canal irrigation were both from Wageningen (Agricultural) University. His Habilitation in Development Sociology is from Bonn University, Germany. At SOAS he initiated the Centre for Water and Development. He is one of the three founding editors of Water Alternatives. An interdisciplinary journal on water, politics and development (www.water-alternatives.org). His research fields are water governance & water politics, agrarian change and technology, and inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to natural resources management. His geographical focus is Asia, particularly South Asia and Central Asia. He is coordinator of the EU H2020 research programme ‘Migration governance and agricultural & rural change in ‘home’ communities: comparative experience from Europe, Asia and Africa (AGRUMIG; starting Feb 2019). Two recent publications are: Suhardiman Diana and Peter P. Mollinga. 2017. Institutionalised corruption in Indonesian irrigation: An analysis of the upeti system. Development Policy Review 00:1-20http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12276, and Mollinga, Peter P. 2016. Secure property rights and non-credibility: The paradoxical dynamics of canal irrigation in India. Journal of Peasant Studies 43(6):1310-1331 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2016.1215304
https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/peter-mollinga

Prof. Dr Claudia Pahl-Wostl

https://www.geographie.uni-osnabrueck.de/personen/mitglieder_des_instituts/profs/pahl_wostl_claudia_prof_dr.html

Prof. Martin Prominski

Martin Prominski is Full Professor and chair of Designing Urban Landscapes at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. He studied landscape planning at the Technical University of Berlin and received a Master´s in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, with the support of a DAAD scholarship. He has a PhD from TU Berlin, published in 2004 as Landschaft Entwerfen. He co-founded the Journal of Landscape Architecture (JoLA) in 2006 and served as editor until 2010. Since 2008, he has been a member of the STUDIO URBANE LANDSCHAFTEN, an interdisciplinary platform for research, practice and teaching on urban landscapes. In 2016, he co-founded the "Sino-German Cooperation Group on Urbanization and Locality Research" together with Prof. Fang WANG, Peking University. His current research focuses on design research strategies, qualification of urban landscapes, and concepts of nature and culture in the Anthropocene. His most recent books are River. Space. Design. (with Stokman A. et al., third, enlarged edition 2023; translated into Chinese), Design Research for Urban Landscapes (Edited with von Seggern, H., 2019), and „Water-Related Urbanization and Locality: Protecting, Planning and Designing Urban Water Environments in a Sustainable Way” (Edited with Wang F., 2020).

He is a registered landscape architect and co-founded “mesh landscape architects, Hannover/Tokyo” in 2018 with three partners.
https://www.freiraum.uni-hannover.de/de/prominski/