Mark G. Lawrence is an American atmospheric scientist whose research focuses on a range of sustainable development topics at the science policy and science-society interface. He is scientific director at the Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS) in Potsdam (former
Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam.[1]
Education and academic career
Mark Lawrence received his Ph.D. in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in 1996 from the
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA, after which he moved to Germany to work as a postdoctoral researcher at the
Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) in Mainz, working closely with
Paul J. Crutzen.[2] From 2000, he was a research group leader at MPIC and went on to lead the working group Atmospheric Modeling at MPIC. In the same year he completed his habilitation in physics at the
University of Mainz. In 2009 and 2010 he served as an interim professor of meteorology at the University of Mainz and received the State Teaching Award of Rhineland-Palatinate.[3] On October 15, 2011, Lawrence was appointed to be a scientific director at the IASS Potsdam.[1][4] In 2023, he is appointed as a member of German Council for Sustainable Development by the chancellor of Germany.[5]
Research
As an atmospheric scientist, Lawrence works particularly on topics within the field of air quality and climate change. At the IASS he helped the organization partner with the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology to fight Climate Change.[6][7][8] At the IASS he was coordinator of the EU project 'European Transdisciplinary Analysis of Climate Engineering (EuTRACE)',[9] in which 14 partner organizations investigated the potentials and risks of climate
geoengineering (2012–2015).[10][11]