BIOSKETCH

Pavel Kabat became the tenth Director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in February 2012. As Director, Professor Kabat is the Chief Executive Officer of the Institute, responsible for the formulation, management, and administration of all research programs and other activities at IIASA.

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1958, Professor Kabat lived and worked in Canada and the Netherlands before moving to Austria to direct IIASA. Previously, he held the Chair of the Earth System Science and Climate Change Group at Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands, where he was also Chair of the Board of the Wageningen Climate Centre, and Science Director and Council Chair of the Dutch National Climate Research Program. As leader of these groups, Professor Kabat helped raise €150 million in funding for integrative research while the Earth System Science Group was evaluated as “excellent” in two consecutive reviews by independent international committees in 2007 and 2010.

Professor Kabat remains a Professor of Earth System Science at Wageningen University, and Director and Chair of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Institute for Integrated Research on Wadden Sea Region. 

Professor Kabat has over twenty years’ experience of leading interdisciplinary and international research teams investigating global environmental change.  During this time with support from the European Commission and other large international agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), he has pioneered large-scale research on global change that has provided the foundation for a new generation of thinking in global change research. His roles have included being Co-Chair of two of the International Scientific Steering Committees of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programmes, ILEAPS from 2004 to date and BAHC from 1994 to 2003; and the Science Director of the International Dialogue on Water and Climate and the International Cooperative Programme on Water and Climate from 2001 to 2009.

Since his PhD in Hydrology, Water Resources and Amelioration in 1986; he has built scientific expertise in climate hydrology and water cycle, water resources and climate, land interactions with the atmosphere and biogeochemical feedbacks, climate system and climate change, and global change. During this time, Professor Kabat has authored or co-authored over 200 refereed publications, including 8 books. He is on the editorial board of range of international scientific journals and is also a member of a variety of academies of sciences and learned societies, ranging from the Finnish Academy of Sciences to the Slovak Academy of Sciences. 

Professor Kabat has provided science and policy advice to numerous organizations and governments in various roles such as Chief Scientist for an Asian Development Bank project in Bangladesh from 2008 to 2010, Member of the Advisory Group on Climate to the Dutch Parliament, Member of the High Level International Mekong Delta Committee and Review Editor for the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC.

Detailed CV (pdf)

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