Peter Schlosser

Biography

Peter Schlosser is the vice president and vice provost of the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. He is the University Professor of Global Futures and holds joint appointments in the School of Sustainability, the School of Earth and Space Exploration in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. The laboratory has been launched to harness the innovative capacity of academia and develop options for sound management of the planet. Professor Schlosser joined ASU in 2018.

Professor Schlosser is one of the world’s leading earth scientists, with expertise in the Earth’s hydrosphere and how humans affect the planet’s natural state. He comes to ASU from Columbia University where he was the Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Professor of Geophysics and Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and the deputy director and director of research at the Earth Institute. He also was a member and the founding chair of the Earth Institute faculty and a member of the senior staff at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. His prior positions included a professorship at the University of Heidelberg and a visiting professorship at the University of Washington-Seattle.

His research interests include studies of water movement and its variability in natural systems (oceans, lakes, rivers, groundwater) using natural and anthropogenic trace substances and isotopes as ’dyes’ or as ‘radioactive clocks.’ He also studies ocean/atmosphere gas exchange; reconstruction of continental paleotemperature records using groundwater as archive; anthropogenic impact on natural systems and sustainable development as academic discipline. His research adds to the basic understanding of ocean circulation and the ocean’s role in climate. The same principles are used to investigate groundwater flow in shallow and deep aquifers, providing results that are relevant for environmental risk and impact studies. He has published more than 180 articles in leading journals.

He is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences, an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, and the Explorers Club.

Titles

• Distinguished Sustainability Scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability
• Vice President and Vice Provost, Global Futures Laboratory, Arizona State University
• Director, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability
• University Global Futures Professor, School of Sustainability
• University Global Futures Professor, School of Earth and Space Exploration, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
• University Global Futures Professor, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering