Introducing Elsevier’s Climate Action Advisory Board

Stuart Whayman, Elsevier

Stuart Whayman is Managing Director Researchers & Librarians at Elsevier. Prior to this, he was Chief Financial Officer at Elsevier, and in this role, he reshaped and retooled the finance organisation to enable it to be both leaner and more business focused. Before that, he was Global CFO of Reed Business Information, which like Elsevier is part of RELX. 

At Reed Business Information he led a successful margin improvement program and supported the business in its return to sustained and accelerated top line growth through a combination of organic initiatives and portfolio change. He joined RELX in 1998 and has worked in a number of business-facing finance roles, has been deeply involved in the business’s digital transformation from print publisher to online information provider. Stuart is a Chartered Accountant, having trained at KPMG, and has an MA in Mathematics from the University of Oxford.

Peter Harrison, Elsevier

As Senior VP of Physical Sciences Journals at Elsevier, Dr Peter Harrison has overall responsibility for a group of scholarly peer-reviewed journals across subject areas including chemistry, materials science, physics, environmental sciences, mathematics, engineering, computer science, energy, and earth sciences. The portfolio includes a combination of subscription-based and open access titles, some of which are published in partnership with professional societies or associations. He is based in Oxford.

Board Members

Hanne Bach, Aarhus University

Hanne Bach is Director at DCE-Danish Center for Environment and Energy(opens in new tab/window), Aarhus University, since 2012, Board member of PEER: Partnership for European Environmental Research and member of the board for the Environmental Network at the Danish Association of Engineers. Manager of a framework contract with the Ministry of Environment, Denmark with assignments for Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities. Previously, she was head of a research group focusing on linkages between environment, climate and society including assessment of societal impacts on the natural system.

Opha Pauline Dube, University of Botswana

Prof Opha Pauline Dube is a global environmental change scientist; an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science(opens in new tab/window), University of Botswana (UB), with a PhD from the University of Queensland.  Pauline has served in several IPCC WGII assessments including  the special report on global warming of 1.5 °C and is a Review Editor in the Food and Fibre and Other Ecosystem Products, Chapter 5 of the WGII 6th Assessment report.

Pauline Co-Chairs the Science Advisory Committee of the Climate Research for Development in Africa; is Vice Chair of the WMO Science Advisory Panel and co-Editor-in-chief of the Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability Journal. She is one of the 15 independet group of scientists working on the UN 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report. Previously Pauline served as Vice Chair of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, 2010-2015 where she led synthesis work on “Global Environmental Change and Least Developed Countries”, focusing on the Asia Pacific LDCs and Islands.  She was the Investigator in the UNEP/GEF/START/TWAS AIACC project on Impacts of Climate Change, Vulnerability and Adaptation Capacity among rural communities in Botswana and also served as Deputy Chair of the Botswana Government National Climate Change Committee, 2017-2019.

Gerard Govers, KU Leuven

Dr Gerard Govers is a Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at KU Leuven. His research covers a wide range of topics related to the earth’s surface. These include soil erosion and sediment transport, geomorphological processes, land use change, and human impact on the global carbon cycle. His research is based mainly in the Belgium Loam Belt, but also covers regions of Australia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Ecuador and the USA.

Since 2017 he is Vice Rector Sustainability at KU Leuven. Under his impulse KU Leuven aims to become a CO2-neutral university. In this role Govers promotes the idea of sustainability among students and staff, and focuses on a greener travel policy and sustainable business development. He also heads the Science & Technology group, which includes 4,000 researchers and 20,000 students from all scientific and technological domains.

John Loughhead, OBE, University of Birmingham

Prof John Loughhead, CB OBE FREng FTSE, was until recently Chief Scientific Adviser(opens in new tab/window) at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) of the UK Government. John is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow and Trustee of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Engineering and of the Chinese Society of Electrical Engineers. 

He is Past-President of the UK Institution of Engineering & Technology, a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and of the City & Guilds of London Institute, a Freeman of the City of London, and Governing Council member at University of York. For many years he has been extensively involved in national and European public sector technology programmes, as a member of various advisory committees and chair of policy reviews in the area of future electric power systems. He was a member of the UK Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council and Chair of its User Panel, member of the Defence Scientific Advisory Council Technology Board, Assessor for UK Government  technology development support programmes, involved in developing Foresight programmes, an advisor to the European Commission Directorate-General Research, and an invited expert to the French national fuel cell programme.

Emilio F Moran, Michigan State University

Dr Emilio F Moran joined Michigan State University in January 2013 as John A Hannah Distinguished Professor, associated with the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, the Center for System Integration and Sustainability, and the Department of Geography. He was until 2012 Distinguished Professor and the James H. Rudy Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University, Professor of Environmental Sciences, Adjunct Professor of Geography, and Director of the Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change (ACT) at Indiana University. Dr Moran is the author of 10 books, 15 edited volumes and more than 180 journal articles and book chapters. His research has been supported by NSF, NIH, NOAA and NASA for the past two decades.

Joyashree Roy, AIT, Thailand

Prof Joyashree Roy is the inaugural Bangabandhu Chair Professor(opens in new tab/window) in the Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Change at AIT, Thailand. She has been with Department of Economics, Jadavpur University in Kolkata, and also been awarded national fellow of the Indian Council of Social Sciences Research (ICSSR). 

She was Ford Foundation Post Doctoral Fellow at LBNL, Berkeley, USA. She is Coordinating Lead Author in of WGIII, of IPCC 4^th, 5^th and 6^th Assessment cycles. She has been a chapter author of Global Energy Assessment. She is the recipient of 2021 Paradigm Award and was in the winning team of 2012 Prince Sultan Bin Aziz award for water. She has published more than 130 peer reviewed journal articles, authored and edited books.

Arnold Tukker, Leiden University

Prof Arnold Tukker is Professor of Industrial Ecology(opens in new tab/window) and Scientific Director of the Institute of Environmental Sciences at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He retains a small position at the Dutch not for profit research organization TNO. Arnold set up 15 million Euro in EU projects in which the world’s most ambitious and detailed global energy/resource/economic input-output database (EXIOBASE) was built.

He leads a EU Marie Curie Innovative Training Network of 15 PhDs researching the circular economy (Circ€uit). He was appointed as a member of the European Academy of Sciences in 2018, and recognized by the Web of Science group as a highly cited researcher in 2019 and 2020. His work in the field of sustainable business models is among the highest cited globally.