WSL Director reappointed

On application of the ETH Board, the Federal Council reappointed the Director the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Konrad Steffen, for another four years. His second term of office will start on 1 July 2016.

Under Konrad Steffen’s leadership, WSL consolidated its worldwide top position in various fields of terrestrial environment research. New joint professorships in landscape ecology and glaciology reinforce the institute’s ties with ETH Zurich. To explore the state and the development of landscape, forests, biodiversity, natural hazards, as well as snow and ice, and to solve relevant problems of society, Konrad Steffen promotes the evaluation of long-term measurements, in particular.

Konrad Steffen studied natural sciences and obtained his doctor’s degree from ETH Zurich in 1984. In 1990, he was appointed Professor of Climatology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, USA, where he later also headed the research institute CIRES. In 2011, the Federal Council appointed him Director of WSL, and since 2012 he has also been Professor of Climate and Cryosphere at ETH Zurich and EPFL. Konrad Steffen is a member of renowned international bodies and makes important contributions to science. Thus he was an author of the Cryosphere Chapter of the IPCC’s Fifth World Climate Report.