Ilona Otto (at)
Ilona M. Otto holds the Professorship in Societal Impacts of Climate Change at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz. She leads a research group focusing on Social Complexity and System Transformation. The group’s ambition is to use complex science theory and novel research methods to analyse social dynamic processes and interventions that are likely to spark rapid social changes necessary to radically transform the interactions of human societies with nature and ecosystem services in the next 30 years. Previoulsy, she spent 10 years at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Prof. Otto is currently involved in the Project HighHorizons - Heat Indicators for Global Health: Surveillance, Early Warning Systems and Adaptation-mitigation Actions to Reduce Heat Impacts in Pregnant Women, Infants and Health Workers in the EU and Africa. She was a principal investigator in an EU Horizon 2020 Project CASCADES: Cascading climate risks: Towards adaptive and resilient European Societies. She also coordinated an EIT Climate KIC founded Project REBOOST: A Boost for Rural Lignite Regions. She was also involved in the EU Horizon 2020 Project ENBEL - Connecting Climate Change. She led a chapter on human health in the World Bank Report Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal as well she led a Report on Modelling the Impact of Climate Change on Poverty at a Subnational Scale that was contracted by the World Bank.
She is a dedicated university teacher as well as she occasionally she gives talks about climate change impacts and sustainability transformation to businesses and other stakeholder groups as well as to school children and young people.