The Academic Director  of The Academia Europaea Bergen Knowledge Hub, Prof. Eystein Jansen is elected Vice President of the European Research Council (ERC).

Eystein Jansen will be responsible for the ERC activities in the Physical Sciences and Engineering domain from January 1th 2023, replacing Prof. Andrzej Jajszczyk. From the same date, Prof. Jesper Svejstrup will oversee the Life Sciences domain, replacing Prof. Nektarios Tavernarakis.

Eystein Jansen holds a PhD in Earth Science from the University of Bergen, where he has been a Professor of palaeoclimatology since 1993. Jansen was the founding director of the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, a world-leading centre on climate dynamics, which he led for 13 years. Jansen is presently the Academic Director for the Academia Europaea Bergen Knowledge Hub and is vice director for the interdisciplinary SapienCE Centre on Early Sapiens behaviour at the University of Bergen.

Author on 2 IPCC reports

Jansen is a member of Academia Europaea, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, The Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences and the Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research. He was the coordinating lead author in the 4th (2007) and lead author in the 5th (2013) Assessment Reports of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Jansen was in 2019 awarded the Brøgger prize for lifelong contributions to geological sciences and the Meltzer prize for excellence in research.

His research has primarily dealt with the influence of changes in ocean circulation on climate and on natural climate changes of the past and present, with key contributions to understanding the evolution of ice ages and abrupt climate change. 2014-2019 he is the principal investigator of an ERC Synergy Grant, ice2ice, on abrupt climate changes. He has also served as a member of ERC’s panel for Advanced Grants.

More on both the new Vice Presidents in the ERC press release.

NORCE scientist and working group member and co-author on the SAPEA report “Biodegradability of plastics in the open environment”, Gunhild Bødtker, started her presentation at the recent Avfallsforsk webinar “Marine Littering in Norwegian Fjords” by saying that “biodegradable plastics have some uses that can be a part of the solution, but it shouldn’t be seen as an excuse for littering, and it is not a quick fix”.

The opening sentiment of Gunhild Bødtker is certainly in line with the SAPEA report itself. Bødtker further suggested that one of uses for biodegradable plastics to be explored further, should be uses with high potential of loss, such as fishing nets, buoys, and lines, or where wear during use is inevitable, such as with tyres. In the latter case, the wear results in microplastics, a further reason to explore the use of biodegradable plastics in items that to a large degree abrases during use. Even as biodegradable plastics can have benefits in these areas, one of the main mottos concerning the use of plastics continues to be “reduce, reuse, recycle”.

The Norce scientist also explained the results of her recent experiment at the Bergen Aquarium. In a tank at the aquarium, she studied the biodegradability of some specific kinds of biodegradable plastics in a marine environment similar to the sea near Bergen in Norway. A particularly interesting finding was that water temperature seems to be less important for biodegradation rates in seawater that previously thought. The cold, Norwegian seawater proved to be as effective for biodegradation, as the South Asian waters has been found to be in previous studies. More about this on the Built2biodegrade website, as well as in a recent interview with Gunhild Bødtker on the AE-Bergen Hub website.

With the main topic of the recent webinar being “Marine Littering in Norwegian Fjords”, several of the presentations focused on the clean-up project “Rein Hardangerfjord”. Here, what originated from a smaller fjord clean up-project, resulted in the monumental ambition to clean up the entire Hardangerfjord in western Norway, one of the country’s most scenic fjords. 

The AE-Bergen Knowledge Hub had the pleasure of hosting the former president of Academia Europaea, Sierd Cloetingh, on his visit to the University of Bergen, September 4^th– 6^th. On this occasion, he gave an interview about his long relationship with Norway and the scientific community in Norway, his work in Earth Science, the importance of science advice for policy, and the work of Academia Europaea. 

– Earlier in your career, your work in Earth Science has taken you to Norway on many occasions?

– Yes, the topography and geology of Norway is of great interest to Earth Scientists. The Norwegian Atlantic margin is one of the best studied in world. I had the pleasure of having a close personal interaction with researchers from both industry and academia, such as Olav Eldholm, Roy Helge Gabrielsen, Bjørn Larsen and Bjørn Rasmussen, as well as AE-Bergen Hub Director Eystein Jansen, who is still very much present in the international scene.

– These people are examples of the presence of a strong research community in this field. Norway is fairly unique as a natural laboratory for studying the role of the interaction of deep Earth and surface processes in continental break-up and subsequent evolution of rifted continental margins and Earth topography. In addition, it has been a very good example of cooperation between the academic field and the energy industry sector, which my PhD students, now with distinguished careers, have continued.

– Of the close to 80 PhD candidates you have supervised, 10 have been engaged in the research cooperation with Norway. What are your impressions of developments in your field in Norway?

– It’s been very interesting to learn more about the recent work of the group that my former student Ritske S. Huismans has built up here in Bergen. They really do frontier research, the international composition of the teams in Norway is exemplary and the work of young scientists is very interesting.

– You seem to have very active retirement?

– I’ve always been multitasking. For instance, I’ve done a lot of community work in addition to my professional work, and I’m happy to be able to continue that. I’ve also been able to multitask in combining my passion for Earth Science with my passion for the European project. I’m happy to still be involved in active science. I sometimes say that though I’m retired, I’m not tired. I’m happy to see how the EU has supported science through a growing portfolio of grants, such as ERC grants and grants through the COST Association.

– It’s been a very important development that grant schemes now exist for all phases of a researcher’s career in Europe, form the young researcher as a student and up until he or she has a full professorship, prof. Cloetingh said in his lecture, citing grant such as Erasmus+, MSCA and the various ERC grants on the different steps of the career ladder and the networking in COST Actions.

– You have a long history with Academia Europaea, for instance you were the vice-president for 6 years before you were president 2014-2020. How do you see both the history of and the future for Academia Europaea?   

– Yes, I was also a member already from 1993, just 5 years after the founding of Academia Europaea. I must say that the founders of Academia Europaea were really visionaries. Many of the principles of Academia Europaea from the beginning, have proved to be essential in the following years. Examples are interdisciplinarity, independence, the bottom-up structure and thinking cross-border.

In this lecture in Bergen, titled “European cooperation in science, innovation and policy advice” Sierd Cloetingh emphasized the importance of the independence of academies like Academia Europaea, as well as the independence of organizations like SAPEA and the bottom-up spirit of the COST Association and the ERC. In his overview of SAPEA projects, he also underscored the wide variety of topics addressed in the SAPEA Evidence Review Reports since 2016. This sentiment was echoed by several of the commentators, particularly Matthias Kaiser.

– These reports are prepared on the request of the European Commission, something that ensures that they will have a life and role to play in policy decisions.

Prof. Cloetingh pointed out in his lecture that there is a close interaction between SAPEA and the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission in SAM.

In terms of the role of the AE-Bergen Hub in SAPEA, prof. Cloetingh highlighted the role of prof. Dag Aksnes as chair of the “Food from the Oceans” SAPEA Working Group, as well as cooperations between AE-Bergen Hub an AE Cardiff, on outreach for “Biodegradability of Plastics” as well as the joint webinar on “Transitioning to New Energy Systems”.

The Academia Europaea Bergen Knowledge Hub has agreed to supply the Young Academy of Europe (YAE) with administrative support. This cooperation was last week formalized through a Memorandum of Understanding, signed by Eystein Jansen for AE-Bergen Hub and Gemma Modinos for YAE. A recording of the event is available here:   

The AE-Bergen Hub has responded to a request from YAE the help out with administrative tasks and web updates, as the YAE currently relies on the unpaid work of board members for the running of it’s administration.

In view of the important work done by YAE, as well as the partnership between YAE and AE established in 2012, the AE-Bergen Hub agreed to the cooperation which have now been formalized, where the hub will contribute to web updates and newsletters, as well as help with sending out fee reminders.

The agreement was formalized with the signing of an MoU during a zoom meeting on September 13^th. 

Dorthe Dahl-Jensen from Uni Copenhagen and Johannes Oerlemans from Utrecht University have won the 2022 Balzan Prize in the category “Glaciation and Ice-Sheet Dynamics”.

Dahl-Jensen is a world leader in ice core drilling and subsequent analysis of ice core data in conjunction with models to determine past climate and how it affected the Greenland ice sheet dynamics and size, thus informing future changes in climate and sea level. Her research has led to numerous achievements that document how the past illuminates potential future abrupt climate changes. Dorthe Dahl-Jensen was elected to Academia Europaea in 2022.

– We are particularly happy to see the prize awarded to a scholar from the Nordic and Baltic region, covered by our Hub, says Eystein Jansen, Academic Director of AE-Bergen Hub.

Johannes “Hans” Oerlemans is a Dutch climatologist specialized in glaciology and sea level. He has been a professor of meteorology in the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy at Utrecht University since 1989. He was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, and has been a member of Academia Europaea since 1989.

The International Balzan Prize Foundation aims is to promote culture, the sciences, and the most meritorious initiatives in the cause of humanity, peace, and fraternity among peoples throughout the world.

Academia Europaea congratulates Dorthe Dahl-Jensen and Johannes Oerlemans as winner of the 2022 Balzan Prize.