+ Director, Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware
Tricia Wachtendorf is a leader in disaster research and education. A Professor of Sociology at the University of Delaware, she directs the world-renowned Disaster Research Center – the oldest center in the world focused on the social science and management aspects of disasters.
For almost three decades, her research has focused on disaster improvisation, multi-organizational coordination, transnational crises, and social vulnerability to disasters. She has engaged in quick response fieldwork after such events as the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, tsunamis affecting India, Sri Lanka, and Japan, Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, earthquakes in China and Haiti, as well as the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.
Yoan Vilain
+ Vice-Provost for International and European Affairs,
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Yoan Vilain is Vice-Provost for International and European Affairs at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and visiting law professor at Sciences Po Paris and Strasbourg. His research encompasses German, French, European and comparative constitutional law, methodology of comparative Law, with special attention to questions of state organisation and federal theory.
He has received several scientific prizes, among others the German-French Parliamentary Prize awarded by the Assemblée nationale and the Bundestag. He serves on numerous scientific committees and academic boards and has been elected to the board of the German Academic Exchange Service.
Photo Copyright: Janina Kusterka
Oliver Tüscher
+ Professor for Mental Health and Resilience, Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research (LIR), Mainz (Germany)
Oliver Tüscher studied medicine at Bochum, Tulane New Orleans, Weill Medical College of Cornell Univ., WMC) and Heidelberg Univ, where he received his MD/PhD in molecular and cellular neurobiology. He started his clinical qualification in Neurology at Hamburg Univ. while in parallel becoming a cognitive neuroscientist focussing on the neural mechanisms of emotion processing and cognitive control using modern neuroimaging methods like functional MRI and FDG-PET on which he spend three years of postdoctoral studies again at WMC in New York City.
Returning to Germany (Freiburg and Mainz) he became board certified in Neurology and Psychiatry and is currently Professor and Vice-Chair, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center - Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz in addition to his LIR affiliation.
Birgitta Sticher
+ Professor of Psychology and Leadership Science, Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR Berlin)
Born in Germany in 1960, she studied psychology and worked in psychiatry as a clinical psychologist. Since 1998, she is a professor at the Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR Berlin). Her students are future police officers and security managers.
A special focus of her research is the involvement of the population in disaster management. To this end, she has conducted two major research projects on the consequences of a long-lasting power outage in Berlin and how to improve the way the population copes with this crisis or disaster. She is excited about improving communication, training students in crisis communication and working on the topic of "discrimination risks and protection".
David Stark
+ Arthur Lehman Professor of Sociology, Columbia University
David Stark is Arthur Lehman Professor of Sociology at Columbia University where he directs the Center on Organizational Innovation. Stark uses a variety of methods to study problems of valuation, innovation, and observation.
Stark recently completed a major research project on Diversity and Performance: Networks of Cognition in Markets and Teams supported by a five-year Advanced career Award from the European Research Council. The project studied the network properties of cognition as organizations face three challenges of detecting error, allocating attention, and organizing innovation.
With continuous support from the National Science Foundation since 2000, Stark and his collaborators are contributing to the field of economic sociology.
Rita Sousa Silva
+ Professor, University of Freiburg (Germany)
Rita Sousa-Silva is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Sciences at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and a Research Fellow at the Young Academy for Sustainability Research at the University of Freiburg, Germany. She also serves as the Co-Chair of the Science-Policy-Society Interfacing Taskforce of the BiodivClim Knowledge Hub, part of the European Biodiversity Strategy for 2030.
Her research focuses on the relationship between urban green spaces and human health and well-being, the importance of tree species diversity for resilient urban forests, and how this knowledge can be applied to plan and manage green spaces for multiple benefits. She aims to produce evidence that can be effectively translated into policy solutions, contributing to transforming cities into more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive places.
Neda Soltani
+ Lead Officer, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Born and raised in Iran, Neda Soltani was forced into a life of political exile in Germany in the summer of 2009. She was the recipient of a Scholar Rescue Fund fellowship in 2012 due to her academic work in Iran. In 2019, she switched from academic work to science management and became the lead officer for protection and advocacy for at-risk and displaced scholars at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
Steven Sokol
+ President and CEO, American Council on Germany
Dr. Steven E. Sokol is the President and CEO of the American Council on Germany. Previously, he served as President and CEO of the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh and prior to that he was the Vice President and Director of Programs at the American Council on Germany. He holds a Doctorate in Law and Policy from Northeastern University as well as an M.A. in International Relations and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins University’s Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. He has also studied at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Freie Universität in Berlin.
Henrik Schultz
+ Professor for Landscape Design and Regional Development, Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences
Henrik Schultz is a landscape architect and co-founder of the consultancies Stein+Schultz and landschaft3*. Henrik is full professor for landscape design and regional development at Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences. Henrik´s research and publications focus on climate-resilient city structures, sustainable mobility, transdisciplinary planning processes and walking as creative practice.
Carsten Ruepke
+ Deputy Consul General, German Consulate General New York
Carsten Ruepke has been Deputy Consul General in New York since August 2023. After completing a banking apprenticeship, Ruepke studied Business Administration at the University of Göttingen and International Management at the University of Rennes/France. He later joined Germany’s Federal Foreign Office and has been posted to Kuwait, Vilnius, New York, and Washington. He worked in the Political Department of the Federal Foreign Office for 4 years as a specialist responsible for Russia and Ukraine, and he has served for 9 years in the European Directorate-General, including 3 years during the run-up to Brexit as Head of the Northern Europe Division.
Cyrus Saint Amand Poliakoff
+ Psychoanalyst, New Lacanian School
Cyrus is a psychoanalyst and editor practicing in Brooklyn, New York. He is a member of the New Lacanian School and the World Association of Psychoanalysis. Current publication projects include editor-in-chief of The Lacanian Review, International Journal of Lacanian Psychoanalysis and editor-in-chief of Lacanian Press, Publishing House of Lacanian Compass. Cyrus teaches and supervises in New York and abroad.
Amy Myers Jaffe
+ Director, New York University
Amy Myers Jaffe serves as Director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University's School of Professional Studies and is a research professor who teaches graduate level courses examining global climate finance, energy and climate justice, and clean technology business and innovation. A leading expert on global energy policy, sustainability, and geopolitical risk, Jaffe is author of several books including her most recent book, “Energy’s Digital Future” published in 2021 by Columbia University Press.
Jaffe is a regular contributor to the popular podcast “The Energy Gang” and a frequent media commentator in television and print media, including the New York Times, Financial Times of London, CNN International and the Wall Street Journal.
Joybrato Mukherjee
+ President, German Academic Exchange Service /
Rector, University of Cologne
Joybrato Mukherjee completed his studies in English, Biology and Education at RWTH Aachen University in 1997. In 2000, he received his doctorate at the University of Bonn; here he also completed his habilitation in 2003. In the same year, he was appointed as Professor of English Linguistics at Justus Liebig University Giessen.
Dr. Mukherjee served as President of JLU Giessen from 2009 to 2023 and is the incoming Rector of the University of Cologne. From 2012 to 2019, he also held the office of Vice President of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and since 2020 he has been the honorary President of the DAAD.
Professor Mukherjee’s research focuses on computer-based corpus linguistics, applied linguistics, English syntax and variety research. Numerous research and teaching visits have taken him to various universities abroad.
Photo Copyright: Ludolf Dahmen / Universität zu Köln
Timon McPhearson
+ Director and Professor, Urban Systems Lab, The New School
Dr. Timon McPhearson is Director of the Urban Systems Lab and Professor of Urban Ecology at The New School in New York City. He investigates the ecology in, of, and for cities and teaches urban resilience, systems thinking, and urban ecology. Dr. McPhearson is a member of the NYC Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) and is an IPCC Lead Author focusing on urban resilience in cities. He is a Senior Research Fellow at The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and Associate Research Fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University in Sweden.
His work is published in scientific journals, in books (Nature-based solutions for Cities, Urban Planet), and covered by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, and more.
Jan Lüdert
+ Head of Programs, DWIH New York
Jan Lüdert is Head of Programs at the German Center for Research and Innovation (DWIH) New York. He has a proven track record of driving innovation and excellence in higher education. He is passionate about international affairs, knowledge management, and building transatlantic partnerships.
Jan earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of British Columbia (UBC). He holds Harvard Kennedy’s School Public Leadership Credential; a First-Class Honors MA in International Relations from the Australian National University; and a BA in Public Policy from Hamburg University for Economics and Politics.
Johanna Lovecchio
+ Director and Professor, Urban Systems Lab, The New School
Dr. Timon McPhearson is Director of the Urban Systems Lab and Professor of Urban Ecology at The New School in New York City. He investigates the ecology in, of, and for cities and teaches urban resilience, systems thinking, and urban ecology. Dr. McPhearson is a member of the NYC Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) and is an IPCC Lead Author focusing on urban resilience in cities. He is a Senior Research Fellow at The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and Associate Research Fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University in Sweden.
His work is published in scientific journals, in books (Nature-based solutions for Cities, Urban Planet), and covered by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, and more.
Alex Lloyd
+ Distinguished Engineer, Google
Alex received his B.A. in Computer Science from Harvard University, where a dormroom startup led him to Google. Since 2004 he's been building the software that stitches millions of servers in dozens of datacenters into the seamless abstraction of "the cloud".
His novel work in Spanner, the first planet-scale relational database, won the Association for Computing Machinery's SIGOPS Hall of Fame Award for establishing new fundamental design patterns, and it underpins all of Google's billion-user products. Using GPS-distributed time signals as a global shared reference, and automated resilience to software, hardware, environmental and even geopolitical turbulence, the system serves exabytes of data at 99.999% availability.
Sophia Li
+ PhD Candidate, Princeton University
Sophia Li is a sociologist writing her Ph.D. at Princeton University. Her doctoral research focuses on intersections between government policy, moral classification, and economic knowledge in American financial regulation around 1980. She holds a Masters in Sociology from Princeton and a B.A. in Economics and Statistics from the University of Chicago. More broadly, she is interested in questions of uncertainty, accountability, and evidence.
Mattias Kumm
+ Professor of Law, New York University and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Mattias Kumm’s research and publications focus on basic issues in comparative constitutional law, European and international law, and philosophy of law. Kumm joined NYU School of Law in 2000 after studies in law, philosophy, and political science in Kiel, Germany, and Paris and doctorate work at Harvard University. He holds a part-time joint appointment as a professor for Global Constitutionalism at the WZB Social Science Research Center and Humboldt University, both in Berlin.
He has held visiting appointments at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, and the European University Institute (Florence), and has lectured at other leading universities worldwide. Kumm is a founding editor and ex editor-in-chief of Global Constitutionalism (Cambridge University Press), was on the board of I•CON and and co-founding editor of Jus Cogens (Springer) as well as other journals.
Kader Konuk
+ Professor of German Literature, TU Dortmund University
Kader Konuk is a comparatist with expertise in the literary and cultural history of migration and exile. She is Professor of German literature at the TU Dortmund University. Between 2014–2023, she was professor of Turkish literary and cultural studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen and between 2001–2013 an assistant professor and, subsequently, associate professor of comparative literature and German studies at the University of Michigan.
Anna-Bettina Kaiser
+ Professor for Public Law / Senior Emile Noel Global Fellow, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin / New York University
Anna-Bettina Kaiser holds a chair in Public Law and General Jurisprudence at the Law Faculty at Humboldt University Berlin. She received her doctorate in 2007 and her habilitation in 2017, both from the University of Freiburg. Her habilitation thesis, “Ausnahmeverfassungsrecht” (The Emergency Constitution), was on the best non-fiction list of the German Newspaper DIE ZEIT in July/August 2020.
She has been awarded several prizes, most recently with the Caroline von Humboldt Professorship by the Humboldt University (November 2022). Anna-Bettina Kaiser has been co-director of the Integrative Research Institute Law & Society since 2019 and co-spokesperson of the project “Laws of Social Cohesion”, funded by the Berlin University Alliance/German Excellence Initiative.
Michael Hagenlocher
+ Academic Officer, United Nations University, Institute for Environment & Human Security (UNU-EHS)
Dr. Michael Hagenlocher is an Academic Officer in the “Vulnerability Assessment, Risk Management & Adaptive Planning” (VARMAP) division of UNU-EHS.
He has a broad interest in understanding the systemic nature of risks and identifying pathways towards more resilient futures. He combines global perspectives and policy agendas with empirical research in Europe, Africa and Asia.
Much of his work focuses on conducting policy-oriented research on drivers and dynamics of multiple, often interconnected vulnerabilities and risks associated with climate change and other hazards/shock events and implications for risk management and adaptation.
Elena Esposito
+ Professor of Sociology, Bielefeld University
Elena Esposito is Professor of Sociology at Bielefeld University and the University of Bologna. Her current research on algorithmic prediction is supported by a five-year Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. Her latest book is "Artificial Communication. How Algorithms Produce Social Intelligence" (MIT Press, 2022; Egea 2022; Shanghai Jiaotong UP 2023).
Benedikt Brisch
+ Director, DWIH New York
Benedikt Brisch studied history, slavic languages and political science at the University of Cologne and has been with the DAAD since 1998. Among other positions, he was Deputy Director of the DAAD Moscow Office and Head of the Division for Europe and North America at DAAD Headquarters in Bonn, Germany.
As Director of the DWIH in New York since 2019, he developed the "Future Forum" format that brings together researchers and innovators from Germany and the U.S.
Photo Credit: Ambika Singh
Hilke Berger
+ Scientific Lead, City Science Lab @ Hafencity University Hamburg
Hilke Marit Berger is Scientific Lead of the City Science Lab at Hamburgs HafenCity University, a cooperation with MIT Media Lab in Cambridge/USA. For the collaboration project UNITAC (United Nations Innovation Technology Accelerator for Cities), she heads the Urban Academy in collaboration with the African Center for Citites in Cape Town.
As an urban researcher, her work at the intersection of cultural studies and urban planning includes practices of participation, issues of collective urban design, co-creation in mixed realities and digital art. She leads the CityClimate meets CreativeCoding project and has a keen interest in artistic research, diversity of methods, and experimental forms of collaboration. She is active as a juror, developed, coordinated and worked for several artistic and scientific projects, for festivals, theaters, universities and authorities. She lectures and publishes internationally.
Isabel Bär
+ IT Consultant, Senacor
Isabel is a skilled professional with a Master's degree in Data Engineering from the prestigious Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Germany. Her research and expertise center around the critical role of data quality in Machine Learning. Moreover, she has made significant contributions in the field of AI software, focusing on areas like MLOps and Responsible AI.
Beyond being a regular speaker at various conferences, she has also taken on the role of organizing conferences on Data and AI, showcasing her commitment to knowledge sharing and community building. She is currently working as a consultant in a German IT consulting company.
Vanessa Agnew
+ Professor, TU Dortmund University
Vanessa Agnew was Professor in Anglophone Studies at Universität Duisburg-Essen until 2023 and is now in the Faculty of Cultural Studies at the Technische Universität Dortmund. Agnew is also Honorary Professor in the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at Australian National University, and Associate Director of Academy in Exile.
