Chris Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University, and Faculty Director of Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. Field�s research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale. He has, for two decades, led major experiments on responses of California grassland to multi-factor global change. Field has been deeply involved with national and international scale efforts to advance science and assessment related to global ecology and climate change. He is co-chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which led the effort on the IPCC Special Report on �Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation� (2012) and Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014). He is a recipient of the Heinz Award, the Max Plank Research Award, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and the Roger Revelle Medal. Field was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences (2001), and fellowships in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2010), the Ecological Society of America (2012), and the American Geophysical Union (2014). Field received his PhD from Stanford in 1981 and has been at the Carnegie Institution for Science since 1984

Professor Dr Wolfgang Cramer, environmental geographer and global ecologist, is scientific director at the Mediterranean Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology (IMBE), in Aix-en-Provence (France), since the establishment of the institute in 2012. Wolfgang Cramer received his academic training at the Universities of Gie�en/Germany (geography, diploma 1981) and Uppsala/Sweden (plant ecology, Ph.D. 1986). From 1987 to 1993, he taught and conducted his research at the Department of Geography, Trondheim University (Norway) while also being a frequently visiting scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. In 1992, he joined the newly founded Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Potsdam, Germany, as head of the department �Global Change and Natural Systems�, later to the institute�s research domain �Earth System Analysis�. In 2003, he was appointed full professor of global ecology at Potsdam University. In 2011, he left Potsdam for his current CNRS position. The scientific contributions by Cramer�s research group (120+ papers) were initially in the area of modelling forest dynamics under climate change. He then began to seek a broader understanding of biosphere dynamics at the global and continental scale, including aspects of natural and human disturbance as well as biodiversity. His research projects have resulted in the first ever region-specific and comprehensive ecosystem service assessment across Europe. Professor Cramer is a contributor in many roles to the IPCC, most recently as Coordinating Lead Author in WG2 (detection and attribution of observed impacts) and core writing team member of the Synthesis Report. He is co-chair of the Science Committee of ecoSERVICES and chief editor of the Springer journal Regional Environmental Change. He regularly serves as advisor of the German and French governments.

Ruth DeFries is the Denning Family Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University in New York City. Her research investigates the relationships among human transformation of the land surface and the biogeochemical and ecological processes that regulate the Earth�s habitability. The overall thrust of the research is to develop underlying science for balancing the needs of human society to transform the landscape for food production, settlements and other requirements while maintaining long-term habitability of the planet. She has conducted research in the Amazon and India among other places in the tropics. Ruth DeFries holds a PhD from Johns Hopkins University and BA summa cum laude from Washington University. She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation �genius� award, and fellow of the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program, American Geophysical Union, Ecological Society of America, and American Academy for Arts and Sciences. She co-directs the undergraduate program in Sustainable Development at Columbia University. Her recent book for a popular audience The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Nature Crisis was published in September 2014.

Ottmar Edenhofer studied philosophy and economics. He is Deputy Director and Chief Economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Professor of the Economics of Climate Change of the Technical University Berlin and Co-Chair of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Moreover, he is director of the newly founded Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) as well as adviser to the World Bank regarding issues of economic growth and climate protection. At PIK he is leading Research Domain III - Sustainable Solutions - that focuses on research in the field of the Economics of Atmospheric Stabilization. He is member of the Science-Industry Cooperation and member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Workgroup Climate, Energy and Environment. He has published articles in Science, Nature, Energy Journal, Climatic Change, Energy Economics, Energy Policy and other peer-reviewed journals and authored a number of books. He was a Lead Author for the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC from 2004 until 2007 and recently co-edited the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN). Ottmar Edenhofer�s research explores the impact of induced technological change on mitigation costs and mitigation strategies, as well as the design of instruments for climate and energy policy and the science-policy interface.

Jean-Charles Hourcade is Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and was previously head of CIRED (1987-2012) in France. He is an established figure for over the last twenty years in the field of economic modelling research on climate change and energy issues, publishing widely on the subject and leading several EU research projects. He is the Scientific Coordinator of the French research networks R2DS dedicated to sustainable development issues, and of the Chair ParisTech long-term modelling for sustainable development. At the international level, he is involved in many international research networks, was expert for many international agencies on environment and energy (OECD, UNEP, WB, IEA, UNESCO) and participated actively to the French negotiating team between UNFCCC COP 1 and COP 6. He was also convening Lead Author for the 2nd and 3rd IPCC Assessment Reports and Lead Author for the 4th and 5th IPCC Assessment Reports. He is a member of the Steering Group of the LCS-RNet for which he was Chair in 2011.

Herv� Le Treut graduated from Ecole Normale Sup�rieure and Universit� Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC). He is currently professor at UPMC and Ecole Polytechnique, and is the director of Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL), a federation of 9 major laboratories of the Paris aera active in the field of global environment.

Herv� Le Treut has played an active role in the development of the IPSL Eath System Model, and its application to the study of the anthropogenic climate changes, including the related feedbacks and impacts. He has been actively involved in the various IPCC assessment reports (as contributor, LA, CLA, RE), and a member of the WCRP Joint Scientific Committee.

Val�rie Masson-Delmotte is a senior climate scientist at IPSL/LSCE (Gif-sur-Yvette, France). Following a PhD thesis on past climate modelling, her research has focused on the documentation and understanding of climate variability using water stable isotopes in natural archives such as ice cores (a full publication list is available at http://www.researcherid.com/rid/G-1995-2011). She was a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC AR5 WG1 report (paleoclimate). She has also published several outreach books for children and for the general public.

Karen O�Brien is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her research has focused on climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation and the implications for human security, as well as on the links between global environmental change and globalization. Her current research explores adaptation as a social, cultural and human process, the relationships between belief sysetm flexibility and adaptive capacity, and the values and visions of youth towards the future in a changing climate. She is especially interested in the role of consciousness and collaborative power in transformation processes, and on the relationship between personal, cultural, and systems transformations. She is on the Scientific Committee for Future Earth, and has participated in the IPCC Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports, as well as the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). She has written and co-edited a number of articles and books, including Environmental Change and Globalization: Double Exposures (Oxford 2008); Climate Change, Ethics, and Human Security (Cambridge 2010) and Climate Change Adaptation and Development (Routledge 2015).

Dr. Shilong Piao is Cheung Kong Professor of Peking University. His current research focuses on the data-model integration to improve our ability for predicting terrestrial ecosystem responses to global change. He has authored and co -authored 100 peer-reviewed journal papers, and was lead author of the IPCC 5th assessment report. He is now on the Editorial Advisory board of Global Change Biology and also serves on editorial board of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber founded the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in 1992 and has been its Director ever since. He holds a Chair in Theoretical Physics at Potsdam University and is an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute (USA). From 2001-2005 he also served as Research Director of the Tyndall Centre in the UK and became a Visiting Professor at Oxford University thereafter.
Schellnhuber is currently Co-Chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), Governing Board Chair of the Climate-KIC of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and Chair of the Standing Committee on Climate, Energy and Environment of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina). He is an elected member of the Leopoldina, the Academia Europaea, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the Max Planck Society and several other academies. He received, inter alia, the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2002), the German Environment Prize (2007) and the Volvo Environment Prize (2011). Schellnhuber was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II (2004), the Order of Merit of the State of Brandenburg (2008) and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2011). He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Copenhagen (2011) and Technische Universit�t Berlin (2012). Schellnhuber was given honorary citizenship of his hometown Ortenburg and the Culture Prize of the district Passau (2014).

Schellnhuber has been a long-standing member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He served as Chief Government Advisor on climate and related issues during the German G8/EU twin presidency in 2007 and serves as a principal advisor to the European Commission President Barroso. He is a member of numerous national and international panels addressing scientific strategies and sustainability issues. Schellnhuber has authored, co-authored or edited more than 250 articles and more than 50 books in the fields of condensed matter physics, complex systems dynamics, climate change research, Earth System analysis, and sustainability science.

[Foto Hollin, 2009]

Pete Smith is the Professor of Soils and Global Change at the Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland, UK), Science Director of the Scottish Climate Change Centre of Expertise (ClimateXChange) and Director of Food Systems for the Scottish Food Security Alliance-Crops. He leads the University of Aberdeen multi-disciplinary theme on Environment & Food Security. Since 1996, he has served as Convening Lead Author, Lead Author and Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He was the Convening Lead Author of the Agricultural Mitigation chapter of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and for the Agriculture and Forestry Mitigation chapter of the IPCC Fifth Assessment. He has coordinated and participated in many national and international projects on soils, agriculture, food security, greenhouse gases, climate change, mitigation and impacts, and ecosystem modelling. He is a Fellow of the Society of Biology, a Rothamsted Research Fellow, a Research Fellow of the Royal Society (London; 2008-2013), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

Since 2010, Dr. Jean-Fran�ois Soussana is the Scientific Director for Environment at the French National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA), Paris, France. He obtained his PhD in plant physiology at USTL Montpellier in 1986 after a degree in agronomy. As a Senior Scientist at INRA, he led the Research Unit on Grassland Ecosystems and Global Change for 8 years. Since 1998, Dr. Soussana is a member of the IPCC Working Group II on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. He was Lead Author for the Third, Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports in the fields of agriculture, forests and ecosystems and shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2007. He has contributed to international research programmes (GCTE, Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems; GCP, Global Carbon Project) and provided scientific expertise to FAO. He has coordinated research projects on climate change and agriculture, and currently leads a large European (FP7) project on livestock and climate change involving four continents. Dr. Soussana has also chaired a national scientific committee on �Ecosystems and Sustainable Development� for the French National Research Agency (ANR) and is currently chairing the Scientific Advisory Board of the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE JPI, 21 countries). He also leads a group of the Global Research Alliance on agricultural greenhouse gases (36 countries) and an activity of the AgMIP international program on climate change impacts on agriculture. He currently chairs the Scientific Committee of the Third Global Conference on Climate Smart Agriculture. Dr. Soussana has published over 130 refereed research papers in international journals as well as two books and a dozen of book chapters. He has developed novel experimental and mathematical modelling approaches to the impacts of climate change on agro-ecosystems and food supply and to the role of agricultural management and biodiversity for the carbon and nitrogen cycles and for greenhouse gas emissions.

Thomas Stocker was born in Z�rich and obtained a PhD in Natural Sciences of ETH Z�rich in 1987. He held research positions at University College London, McGill University (Montreal), Columbia University (New York) and University of Hawai'i (Honolulu). Since 1993 he is Professor of Climate and Environmental Physics at the University of Bern. His research encompasses the development of climate models of intermediate complexity, modelling past and future climate change, and the reconstruction of greenhouse gas concentrations based on ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica.

Thomas Stocker has authored or co-authored 180 peer-reviewed papers in the area of climate dynamics and paleoclimate modeling and reconstruction. After more than 10 years of service in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) he has been elected Co-Chair of Working Group I in 2008. Thomas Stocker was awarded a Dr. Honoris Causa of the University of Versailles (France) in 2006 and the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union in 2009. In 2012, he was elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Carolina Vera is the Director of the Centre for Atmosphere and Ocean Research (CIMA-UMI/IFAEC)I, jointly sponsored by the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina National Council of Sciences (CONICET) and CNRS (France). Dr. Vera has long research experience on understanding and predicting climate variability and change in South America. She also participates in integrated projects focused on developing climate information for decision making at different socio-economic sectors (e.g. water resources, agriculture). She has authored several peer-reviewed scientific journal articles and book chapters.

She is currently member of Future Earth Science Committee and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change (IAI). She has also served in other committees like the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) Joint Scientific Committee. She was Lead Author of the IPCC Special Report on "Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation" (SREX).