Strengthening science within society

Mojib Latif has been a full member of the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg since April 2007 and its vice president since June 2021. The multi-award-winning climate researcher is known for his ability to communicate his research findings to the general public in an understandable way. As the new president of the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg, he wants to "strengthen science within society". Especially with regard to the fact that parts of society deny scientific findings, he emphasizes, "I think a society can only function well if decisions are made on the basis of serious scientific work." In addition, the climate physicist sees his task as making the academy's interdisciplinary potential even more visible. "We realize that we cannot solve climate change, the Corona crisis or other major problems facing humanity on a disciplinary basis", Latif said. The Academy of Sciences in Hamburg will therefore also intensify its science communication. "We have knowledge in very different disciplines at the Academy. And I think it is important to communicate this knowledge. We're funded by the taxpayer, and it's our duty to communicate what we actually do and what results we get."

For more than three decades, Mojib Latif has been conducting research, particularly on the interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere and their influence on the climate. He has received several awards for his research. For example, with the Sverdrup Gold Medal of the American Meteorological Society, the German Environmental Award and the Alfred Wegener Medal of the German Meteorological Society. He has been president of the German Association Club of Rome Society since November 2017.

Mojib Latif, born in Hamburg in 1954, studied business sciences and meteorology at the University of Hamburg. He received his PhD and Habilitation in oceanography, also from the University of Hamburg, and worked at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg from 1983 to 2002. In 2003, he was appointed professor at Kiel University and the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, the predecessor of today's GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. He heads the research unit Maritime Meteorology at GEOMAR. Mojib Latif published more than 200 scientific papers in journals and authored several books. Recently, Kiel University has awarded him a senior professorship. Latif can thus continue his basic research and teaching.

The current acting academy president, Prof. Dr. Edwin J. Kreuzer, has been in office since July 1, 2013. He was re-elected in 2018. Kreuzer is now making his office available early because he has been president of the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities since September 1, 2021. Until 2012, Kreuzer, who holds a degree in mechanical engineering, headed the Institute of Mechanics and Marine Technology at Hamburg University of Technology. From 1993 to 1995 he was vice president and from 2005 to 2011 president of the Hamburg University of Technology.

Prof. Kreuzer's research focuses on fluid-structure interactions, nonlinear dynamics and the dynamics of multibody systems. He also worked on numerical methods of dynamics and branching theory as well as active dynamical systems. He has published more than 300 scientific papers on his research results. Various guest professorships took him several times to the USA, Brazil and China. In 2004, he received an honorary professorship at the Nanjing University of Science and Technology in China. Edwin J. Kreuzer is a member of numerous professional societies and academies, including the German Academy of Science and Engineering - acatech.