Falling Walls Circle – Plenary Table: Climate Action Future

Fred supervises Frontiers’ journal portfolio and is directly involved in all strategic projects. He served as a publishing consultant during Frontiers’ launch phase, re-joining in 2013 in his current role. An active advocate for Open Science, Fred frequently organizes and participates in a variety of advocacy events and roundtables.

Fred earned a PhD in Chemistry from Harvard and continued his research on atmospheric compounds at the CNRS in France and EPFL in Switzerland. He moved into academic publishing in 1997, first overseeing a portfolio of journals, book series and major reference works at Elsevier Science and then founding FontisMedia, a publishing technology start-up that developed the first multi-language content-management platform for scientific journals. He was also technology advisor for the launch of an institutional document repository InfoScience and consulted for the founding of the English-language EPFL Press.

Lars Peter Riishojgaard is the Director of the Global Greenhouse Gas Watch in the WMO Secretariat. He was previously the Director of the WIGOS Branch in WMO, where he led the development of the Unified WMO Data Policy and the Global Basic Observing Network (GBON). Prior to joining WMO, Dr. Riishojgaard worked on various NASA programs in the US for 18 years. His main areas of interests are numerical weather prediction, observational data impact and greenhouse gas monitoring. Riishojgaard’s background is mathematics and physics, and he holds a Ph.D in geophysics from the University of Copenhagen.

Johan Rockström is the Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Professor at the Institute of Earth and Environmental Science at Potsdam University. Rockström is an internationally recognized scientist on global sustainability issues, who led the development of the new Planetary Boundaries framework for human development in the current era of rapid global change at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. He is a leading scientist on global water resources, with about 25 years of experience from applied water research in tropical regions, and more than 150 research publications in fields ranging from applied land and water management to global sustainability.

In addition to his research endeavors, which have been widely used to guide policy, Rockström provides strategic scientific guidance as a member of the European Commission’s Expert Group ‘Mission Board for Adaptation to Climate Change, including Societal Transformation’ and the ‘Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ and consults several governments and business networks. He acts as an advisor for sustainable development issues at noteworthy international meetings, such as the World Economic Forum, the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conferences (UNFCCC). Furthermore, he chairs or co-chairs the advisory board for the EAT Foundation, the Earth Commission, and the Earth League, is Chief Scientist of Conservation International, member of the European Investment Bank Advisory Group, and elected member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Massamba Thioye is leading at the UNFCCC secretariat, the UN Climate Change Global Innovation Hub. He is also Advisory Committee member of the European Green Digital Coalition and member of the Strategic Advisory Board of the “Net-Zero” initiative under ISO.
Massamba Thioye has published several breakthrough technical papers in technical peer-reviewed journals. The most recent include (i) an article on a reformed integrated green bond and carbon market as well as a New advanced consumption-based GHG accounting system for cities enabled by Distributed Ledger Technologies.

Vivienne Parry OBE is a British writer, broadcaster and facilitator best known for her role as a science communicator. A scientist by training, she has hosted many prestigious science events, but is also known for her extensive work with public and patients. She has a part time role as Head of Public Engagement at Genomics England. She was formerly Vice Chair of Council of UCL and on the board of UKRI, the body which oversees the UK’s £8 billion research budget. In the past she has been a newspaper and magazine columnist, a radio host and presented BBC TV’s iconic science show ‘Tomorrow’s World’

Lee is the Executive Director of the Villars Institute, a Swiss nonprofit foundation dedicated to accelerating the transition to a net zero and nature positive economy by promoting systems leadership and intergenerational collaboration and a Titular Professor at the University of Geneva’s School of Economics and Management (GSEM), teaching about the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Disruptive Technologies.  Lee serves as the Vice Chair on the Board of Governors of the International Baccalaureate (IB) and is on the Board of Trustees of the EAT Foundation. He also serves on the advisory boards of the Frontiers Planet Prize and the Global Learning Council. Lee was previously the Managing Director at the World Economic Forum (WEF) responsible for Global Programming and their Annual Meeting in Davos from 2009 until 2021.