Steve Carpenter
Stephen Russell (Steve) Carpenter is a leader of whole-ecosystem experiments focused on basic and applied questions about lake ecosystems. Topics include trophic cascades and their effects on production and nutrient cycling, contaminant cycles, recreational fisheries, eutrophication, nonpoint pollution, ecological economics of freshwater, and resilience of ecosystems and social-ecological systems. He is an experienced organizer of collaborations among scientists, managers and the general public to improve ecosystem services of working landscapes and the freshwaters that drain them. Examples include adaptive management workshops, resilience assessments, and scenarios projects.
Claudia Pahl-Wostl
Claudia Pahl-Wostl is full professor for resources management at the Institute for Environmental Systems Research (USF) in Osnabrück, Germany. She is an internationally leading scholar on governance and adaptive and integrated management of water resources and the role of social and societal learning. Her research programme builds on foundations in systems science, which explicitly acknowledge the complex and often unpredictable dynamics of the systems to be managed. In 2012 the Bode Foundation Water Management Prize was awarded to Prof. Pahl-Wostl for the pioneering interdisciplinary work on “Governance in times of change” and comparative analyses of water governance in large river basins.
Recent research interests include the water-energy-food nexus and SDG implementation and social-ecological-network analysis.
David Tickner
Dave Tickner is Chief Freshwater Adviser at WWF-UK. He advises river and wetland conservation programmes in the UK and internationally, engages governments and companies on water-related issues, and leads research into global freshwater challenges and solutions. Dave trained as a geographer and began his career as a policy adviser in the UK environment ministry. He then completed a PhD in freshwater sciences from the University of Birmingham before directing WWF’s Danube River programme, based in Vienna. He has held various non-executive, advisory and visiting roles in public, private, academic and not-for-profit sectors and has published widely in scientific journals, grey literature and popular media.
Sarian Kosten
Sarian Kosten has a broad interest in the impact of climate change on freshwater ecosystems and in the emission of greenhouse gasses from surface waters (including, lakes, ditches and fishponds). Questions she focuses on are: How much greenhouse gases are emitted from different systems, what are the driving factors and how can we possibly mitigate these emissions?
Ruben Sommaruga
Ruben Sommaruga graduated in Biological Oceanography from the University of Uruguay in Montevideo and pursued his doctoral studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Following a three-year postdoc within an EU project, he attained tenure (Habilitation) at the latter institution. Since 2011 he has held the position of Full Professor of Limnology, leading the research unit on Alpine Freshwater Ecology at the Institute of Ecology. Additionally, he served as the Institute’s director from 2012 to 2020. For over three decades, his research has predominantly centered on high-elevation lakes and used a multidisciplinary approach to understand the adaptation of organisms, particularly of planktonic ones, to the unique challenges posed by these ecosystems and their rapidly changing environmental conditions. At SIL, he actively participates in various committees (Tonolli and Wetzel Awards), while presently chairing the Brian Moss Student Award. Recognitions for his scientific contributions include the admission in the European Academy of Sciences, the International Ecology Institute’s Prize for Professional Excellence in Limnetic Ecology and the Scientific Award from the Principality of Liechtenstein among others. His involvement extends beyond research as he has served as an editor and member of several editorial boards and dedicated 12 years to the Austrian Science Fund as a member of the Scientific Board. He has over 150 scientific publications that span from physical limnology to biogeochemistry, microbial, zooplankton, and virus ecology, as well as climate change effects on lakes.
Ewa Merz
Ewa Merz was awarded the Brian Moss Student Award for the best paper published as part of a thesis in the field of limnology. The paper: “Disruption of ecological networks in lakes by climate change and nutrient fluctuations”, published in Nature Climate Change (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01615-6). She will be presenting an extended talk about her research at the SIL2024 closing ceremony.
STUART BUNN
Stuart is a member of the Australian Rivers Institute and, until July 2022, was its founding Director. His major research interests are in the ecology of river and wetland systems with a particular focus on the science to underpin river management. Stuart has extensive experience working with international and Australian government agencies and industry on water management issues, and he is currently a member of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. In 2019, he was appointed to the Earth Commission, hosted by Future Earth, and in 2022 was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
SYLVIA BONILLA
Professor at the Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la República, Uruguay. She earned her PhD (Biology) from the Universidad de la República and she did a postdoc at Université Laval (Canada). Her research seeks to better understand the processes involved in the dispersion and colonization of toxic cyanobacteria, their ecological success, and factors that affect their production of toxins, which ultimately impact on recreational and drinking water supplies. She uses a combination of laboratory and field-based research to address these questions.
MARCUS VANDERGOES
Marcus is a paleoecologist based at GNS Science, Lower Hutt, Aotearoa-New Zealand. His research focuses on reconstructing historic and prehistoric environmental change through the analysis of sediment cores taken from lakes and wetlands. This work allows insight into how ecosystems and environments have responded to climate change, landscape evolution and human impact. His research interests include reconstructing records of climate and environmental change to provide a context for understanding current and future change and defining pre-human ecological baseline conditions from lakes to guide restoration and conservation.