Center director and Professor Jens-Christian Svenning 

Biography: Prof. Jens-Christian Svenning obtained his PhD in tropical plant community ecology from Aarhus University (AU) in 1999. He has been a full professor at Department of Biology, AU since 2009 and currently is the director of Center for Biodiversity Dynamics in a Changing World (BIOCHANGE). His research integrates macroecology and biogeography with field-based ecology, remote sensing and paleoecology and socio-ecological systems, and has joint focus on fundamental questions with applied research in global change, conservation, restoration and sustainability science. Prof. Svenning works on both plants and animals, but has special interest in megabiota, i.e., trees and megafauna. His work is global in scope, with long-term research foci not only in Europe, but also in Latin America, Africa and East Asia. He is the author of >450 peer-reviewed papers in international scientific journals as well as many other publications.

Professor Felix Riede 

Biography: Professor Felix Riede is German-born and British educated with a PhD in archaeology from Cambridge University. Using evolutionary and ecological theory and methods he seeks to understand human-environment relations past, present and future. His work focuses in particular on major tipping point episodes such as the end of the Pleistocene, extreme environmental events such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis, and on the Anthropocene. Felix has a strong interest in the application of computational method to archaeology, including the application of morphometrics and phylogenetics to track culture change and distribution modelling as a way to link climate and environment with human settlement distributions. He currently pursues these ambitions through his ERC-CoG CLIOARCH. In addition, Felix works on the emergence of modern human behaviour in early hominins with a particular focus on the role of social learning and play in adaptation.

Professor Signe Normand 

Biography: I am a macro- and vegetation ecologist dedicated to understanding responses of individuals, species, communities, and biodiversity to natural and anthropogenic drivers, and to providing methodological progress for improved monitoring and models of biodiversity dynamics. The goal of my research is to find answers to fundamental questions in ecology, but also to inform nature conservation about the impact of global change on biodiversity and ecosystems. Overall, my research has four main components: (i) empirical studies to gain insight on the drivers of ecological patterns and responses across time and space, (ii) the improvement and development of actionable models of future global change impact on biodiversity, (iii) utilizing the potential of drone-based remote sensing in combination with air- and satellite-borne remote sensing for monitoring, understanding, and predicting vegetation and biodiversity dynamics, and (iv) creating the scientific basis for spatially explicit local sustainable solutions that account for multiple Sustainable Development Goals.

Tenure-track Assistant Professor Alejandro Ordonez Gloria 

Biography: I am a global change macroecologist interested in understanding what drives the response of species and communities to environmental changes and the consequences of such changes for both ecosystem functions and services, namely the emergence of novel ecosystems. This research aims to understand and predict future ecosystem behaviour in the face of the ongoing and accelerating earth’s changing ecological, biogeochemical, climatic and disturbance gradients. For this, I use a macroecological perspective to quantify and provide scenarios that explain the how both past climate change and current drivers of environmental change (climate change, land degradation and invasive species) shaped modern diversity patterns, where those changes have led to novel ecosystems emerging, and the implications of such changes for the key ecosystem processes and nature’s contributions to people.