Climate / Climate Change

Prof. Miyazaki, is a critical humanities scholar working on the theory, critique, and history of digital media, digitization, and computation as productive practice. He uses numerous social-critical, philosophical and technology-related theories of the last century (historical materialism, critical theory, poststructuralism, science and technology studies, media theory, media archaeology, postcolonialism, design studies). Currently, Prof. Miyazaki is working on the theory and history of alternative, non-profit, sustainable production practices that could be realized through other types of digitization. The focus is not only on social change, but also on technical-media change, which has no future without critical knowledge of technology.

Prof. Kaufmann's research and that of her research group is concerned with the molecular mechanisms of gene regulation in plants. Plant developmental processes require coordinated changes in the activity of a large number of genes in the nucleus. These are controlled by specific transcription factors interacting with epigenetic regulators. We are investigating the molecular modes of action and gene regulatory networks of these regulatory proteins.

In addition, Kaufmann and her team are interested in environment-independent variation, and evolutionary changes in these networks. In addition, there is interest in the molecular mechanisms that control the activities of genes during development, using a combination of epigenomics, proteomics, and classical genetics. Their model system is flower development. By combining experimental and computational analyses, the team aims to understand multicellular development at the systems level.

In the course of her research at the Humboldt University, Dr. Neubert deals with land use, the different models, possibilities, challenges and questions that go along with it. She and her team can be described as Land Use Specialists.

Dr. Neubert leads research projects and teaches in the areas of: Rural and agricultural development, water resources management, climate change adaptation. Development and implementation of the participatory impact assessment method: MAPP.

As part of their scientific activity Dr Markus Krutzik and the team members of the.quantum.chapter have acquired an extensive amount of expertise in developing tailored quantum sensors - from key technology to subsystem and system level. Quantum optical sensors and optical clocks are used in high-precision inertial navigation, gravimetry and gradiometry or for the synchronisation of networks. Hence, they are central for navigating GPS-free environments, for geophysics, the exploration of natural resources, the monitoring of climate change, and for addressing fundamental questions of modern physics. Central to their research are compact and robust setups for optical spectrocopy, absolute frequency references, and ultra-cold atom based inertial sensors. For this purpose, the team developed lasers and optical systems for generation and manipulation of light, as well as control software and data management platforms. Their setups are not only operated in laboratory research: They are also used as in field or even in space. In addition to development, testing and operation of atomic quantum sensors, Dr Krutzik and the team gained expert knowledge in all stages of mission and system design, ranging from mission architecture and identification of requirements to system integration and qualification, as well as development of control concepts and data analysis. In addition to Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Dr Krutzik is also associated with Ferdinand-Braun-Institut, Leibniz-Institut für Höchstfrequenztechnik.

The team of Christoph Schneider works on the impacts of climate and climate change in the field of urban climates and in the field of cryospheric sciences (anything related to snow and ice). His expertise comprises the downscaling of meteorological respectively climatological data for applications in high spatial resolution, for example for urban planning and construction schemes and also for the analysis of potential impacts of climate change on the level of city quarters and cities. Furthermore, such numerical and empirical-statistical procedures are applied to the projection of future water resources in glaciated catchments in high alpine environments worldwide. This also leads to applications regarding the future state of snow covers in mountain ranges which is especially important for questions of future prospects of snow sport tourism. In both fields of applications, the urban climatology and the cryospheric research, measurement strategies and data acquisition of relevant atmospheric variables for the projects are used besides theoretical modelling approaches and downscaling as outlined above.