Victor Brovkin is head of a group on Climate-Biogeosphere Interactions at the Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology and professor at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He was trained as a mathematician at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia, where he got his PhD degree in 1988. Victor Brovkin has over 20 years experience in global climate and carbon cycle science. His research is focused on interactions between terrestrial ecosystems and the climate, including biogeophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks. Victor Brovkin has developed global dynamic vegetation models and applied them for pioneering studies on stability of climate-vegetation system. He uses models of different complexity to study carbon cycle dynamics in the Quaternary period, including the last glacial cycle and the Holocene. His groups research has now shifted towards understanding the role of high latitude ecosystems in the climate system, focusing on terrestrial and marine permafrost processes. 

Ricarda Winkelmann is a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany and teaches climate physics as junior professor at Potsdam University. Winkelmann is a member of the German Young Academy of Science and contributing author of the sea-level chapter of the IPCC 5th Assessment Report. Trained as a mathematician and theoretical physicist in Germany and the United States, Winkelmann received her PhD with distinction from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in 2012. Winkelmann was appointed Junior Professor for Climate System Analysis at Potsdam University in 2014. Her research at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research focuses on tipping elements in the Earth System, Antarctic ice-dynamics and future sea-level rise.