Profile

Martin Beniston

Honorary Professor

Bio

Martin Beniston is Honorary Professor, Chair for Climate Research and was Director of the Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He undertook his university studies in Environmental Science in England and he completed his doctoral dissertation on Atmospheric Modelling at the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique in France. More recently, he obtained his Habilitation degree at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich in Climate Modelling. His career in research has led him to Australia, Canada, Germany and, since 1985, Switzerland. He has worked in the fields of air pollution at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL); from 1990-1992 he was director of the Swiss National Climate Program of the Swiss Academy of Sciences in Bern, and from 1993-1996, he shared his time between a senior scientist position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and the vice-chairmanship of one of the working groups of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that was co-awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize). He held a full professor position as head of the Institute of Geography at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, from 1996-2006. On October 1, 2006, he was appointed full professor at the University of Geneva, where he held the chair for climate research and was director of the Institute for Environmental Sciences (ISE). In 2008 he initiated and became the coordinator of a major project within the EU Framework Programme 7 project “ACQWA”; a project on climate and water in vulnerable mountain regions. Martin Beniston has close to 170 publications in the international literature (peer-reviewed journal papers, book chapters), has authored 4 books and edited or co-edited a further 10 volumes with major publishers (his current h-index is 42, according to “Google Scholar” with over 10,000 citations by other researchers). He is Series Editor of “Advances in Global Change Research” published by Springer Publishers, Editor-in-Chief of “Environmental Science and Policy” (Elsevier Publishers), Associate Editor of “Journal of Hydrology” (Elsevier) and “Regional Environmental Change” (Springer). He is, or has been, a member of international scientific committees in Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland and the EU, and was elected to the Academia Europea in 2000.