Peter Schlosser has traveled from the North Pole to across the Antarctic circle–and many places in between–analyzing the planet and humans’ impact on its systems. This opportunity to see the planet from many perspectives inspired him to accept the challenge to design and launch the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, an organization dedicated to bringing together natural science, social science, humanities, engineering science, medical science, and other disciplines to propel solutions and decisions that lead to a thriving future for all.
The Global Futures Laboratory is a visionary enterprise that channels knowledge of sustainability, innovation, complexity and human decision making into problem solving and problem anticipation to help humans live in balance with Earth. Established as one of the planet’s leading Earth physicists, Schlosser now leads the effort as vice president and vice provost of Global Futures and University Professor of Global Futures. He 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, and the School of Ocean Futures.
Schlosser draws on more than four decades of research to steer the Global Futures Laboratory, having been cited as a “world-famous specialist in the study of water movement and its variability in natural systems” (Aggarwal, Fröhlich, Gat & Gonfiantini, 2012, p. 358). His scientific interests include global futures; sustainable development; anthropogenic trace substances and isotopes; ocean/atmosphere gas exchange; reconstruction of continental paleotemperature records using groundwater as archive; and anthropogenic impact on natural systems.
Prior to joining ASU, Schlosser was the Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Professor of Geophysics and Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, and the deputy director and director of research at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He 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. Other past positions include a professorship at the University of Heidelberg and a visiting professorship at the University of Washington-Seattle.
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.
