Born in Woodbury, New Jersey, USA in 1969, Mark Lawrence is an American earth system and atmosphere research scientist. Since 2011 he has been Scientific Director of the Research Institute for Sustainability – Helmholtz Centre Potsdam (RIFS) (formerly Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS)) and since 2014 an honorary professor at the University of Potsdam.

Lawrence earned his PhD from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia in 1996. From 1993 to 2011 he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, first as a doctoral researcher, then as a postdoc and finally as research group leader.

Among other things, he has been co-chair of the Science Platform Sustainability 2030 (wpn2030) since 2020, a board member of the German Climate Consortium (DKK) since 2021, a member of the steering committee of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Germany (SDSN) since 2016, and a committee member of the VDI (Association of German Engineers), Interdisciplinary committee on climate protection and the energy transition (VDI-IGKE) since 2021.

Mark Lawrence has been a member of the German Council for Sustainable Development since January 2023. He was appointed for a further term in January 2026 by German Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

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