Earth Scientists Elected to the Academia Europea

In 2015, five Earth scientists were elected as members of the Academia Europaea (www.ae-info.org). Academia Europaea was founded in 1988 and is a European, nongovernmental association that acts as an academy and has about 2800 members. It includes leading experts from the physical sciences and technology, the Earth and environmental sciences, the biological sciences and medicine, mathematics, the letters and humanities, the social and cognitive sciences, economics, and law.

Greg Houseman is a professor of geophysics in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds (UK). Houseman researches the deformation and instability of the continental mantle lithosphere by using both computational modeling techniques and regional seismic tomography. He previously held posts at Monash University (Australia), Australian National University, and Harvard University (Massachusetts, USA).

Sean Willett is a professor of Earth surface dynamics at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, or ETH Zürich, in Switzerland), where he works on the interactions among tectonics, climate, erosion, and sedimentation. His research makes use of forward and inverse models, as well as innovative applications of thermochronometry and geochemical proxies, working towards a better understanding of the Earth’s surface.

Ülo Mander is a professor of physical geography and landscape ecology and head of the Department of Geography within the Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences at the University of Tartu (Estonia). His research interests include nutrients and carbon cycling in landscapes and ecosystems and ecological engineering (material fl ux controls in watersheds using constructed wetlands and riparian buffer zones). He is currently a visiting professor at the French National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture (IRSTEA) in Antony/Paris.

Klaus Mezger is a professor of isotope geology in the Department of Geological Sciences, University of Bern (Switzerland). His research and teaching center on geochemistry and cosmochemistry. His main research interests are the timing and processes of planet formation in the Solar System and the genesis and evolution of Earth’s continental crust, including its metamorphic transformation.

Dimitrios Sokoutis is a professor and the director of the Tectonic Laboratory at Utrecht University (Netherlands) and adjunct professor at the University of Oslo (Norway). His research combines field studies with physical analogue modeling and builds bridges to numerical modeling. He integrates these methods to study rheological aspects of lithosphere deformation and feedback relations with surface processes.