Ilan Chabay

Biography

Ilan is Head of Strategic Science Initiatives and Programs and the KLASICA project (knowledge, learning, and societal change research alliance) at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam Germany, where he has been since 2012. He is also Adjunct Professor in the School of Sustainability of Arizona State University (ASU) at the ASU Washington Barrett and O’Connor Center. From 2013-2016, he co-led inter-disciplinary research on ecological, social, and economic transformations in the Eurasian Arctic. He has published 60 peer-reviewed articles in major journals in social and natural science and holds three patents. He serves on international advisory boards on affordable energy for humanity, environmental systems research, social dimensions of creativity and innovation, and integrated risk governance. He was Helmholtz Alliance Energy Trans professor at the University of Stuttgart Institute for Social Science (2012-2014), elected Honorary Member of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2012, and appointed Hasselblad Professor in sociology and applied IT in Gothenburg and Chalmers Universities, Sweden (2006-2011). He founded the New Curiosity Shop, a workshop in Silicon Valley (1984-2001), where he led design and production of interactive learning exhibitions for more than 230 museums, science centres, and corporations worldwide, including Disney and NASA. He was Associate Director of the Exploratorium Science Museum in San Francisco (1982-83), consulting professor of chemistry at Stanford (1984-88), and led research on non-linear optical spectroscopy at the US National Institutes of Standards and Technology (1974-82) after receiving his Ph.D. in chemical physics from the Univ. of Chicago.

Titles

• Head of the KLASICA project (knowledge, learning, and societal change research alliance) at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam Germany.
• Adjunct Professor, School of Sustainability at Arizona State University (ASU)