Ralf Seppelt

My kids were born 1997, 1999 and 2001. It is not that unlikely, that they will experience the world turning into the next century, 2100, a year, frequently the endpoint of so many climate-change scenario simulations. But even looking back in time, shows that the first two decades of our century brought so many climate-change driven disasters, that there is no time to loose. Preventing further intensification of the climate crises and bending the trajectory of biodiversity loss is of utmost importance. We don’t want to see a century ahead of us, as visualized by a movie from 2009 from ABC, ‘Earth 2100’, or as outlined in Kim Stanley Robison’s novel ‘The ministry for the future’.

Prof. Dr Ralf Seppelt was appointed Founding Director of the new Interdisciplinary Centre for Socio-Environmental System of the University Luxembourg in October 2024 and assumed his mandate in March 2025. Ralf Seppelt, born 1969 in Braunschweig, Germany, is an esteemed applied mathematician and internationally renowned expert in landscape ecology and renewable resource economics. Having published more than 150 scientific articles and serving as an expert for the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service (IPBES), he is renowned globally for his work in environmental science, biodiversity, and socio-ecological systems. Before joining the University of Luxembourg, he led the research unit “Ecosystems of the Future” at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ in Leipzig, Germany.