Wolfgang Lucht is co-chair of “Earth System Analysis,” one of four research domains at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). He is also the Alexander von Humboldt Chair in Sustainability Science at the Department of Geography at Humboldt University in Berlin. A physicist turned geo-ecologist and sustainability scientist, Wolfgang’s work addresses the future of the biosphere, the effects of climate and land-use change on global landscapes, the interaction between human societies and the Earth’s environment, sustainability, and Earth-system analysis. After his PhD in solar system physics (1993), he worked at the Department of Geography and Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University as a group leader contributing land surface science to NASA’s environmental monitoring sensor, MODIS. He has been leading PIK’s research groups on the global biosphere and on climate impacts and vulnerability. Among his active and previous functions are: membership of the European Space Science Committee; speaker of the German Climate Change Research Program (DEKLIM); member of the German National Committee on Global Change Research; and lead author on the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation. He was recently appointed a member of the German Committee for Future Earth.