Dr. Hans-Peter Plag
Professor, Department of Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
Director, Mitigation and Adaptation Research Institute
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA

Dr. Hans-Peter Plag is a known expert on societal and environmental sustainability, climate change, sea level rise, Earth system dynamics, solid Earth geophysics and geodesy. He started as carpenter, then studied mathematics and geophysics, and obtained his PhD in Natural Sciences in 1988 from the Free University of Berlin. He joined ODU in June 2013 as Co-Director of the Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Initiative and Professor of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. He is the founding Director of the Mitigation and Adaptation Research Institute (MARI) at ODU. He provides scientific advice on the causes of, and adaptation to, modern global change and he engages in community assessments of local to global risks associated with natural and anthropogenic hazards. He contributes to the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), which is implementing the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) with particular focus on Earth observations in support of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.