Professor van der Beek is a globally recognized leader in quantitative studies of landscape evolution in tectonically active regions. His research merges innovative landscape-evolution models with low-temperature thermochronology and provides novel insights into how the tectonics and erosional processes interact to shape orogenic belts and rifts at a variety of timescales. In Germany, he will focus on deciphering the role of climate oscillations on erosion rates in high mountains and assess possible feedbacks with tectonic processes.

Professor Hervé Bocherens is honoured with the Humboldt Research Award for his groundbreaking contributions to palaeobiology and evolutionary ecology. He opened the field of reconstructing the diet of extinct animals using geochemical signals from fossil bones and teeth. His methods are widely applied in modern Palaeontology. Professor Bocherens also works on the cutting edge of research for determining the diet of hominids. During his stay in Germany he is working on the evolutionary ecology and bone geochemistry of Swabian cave bears, Neanderthals and early modern humans.

Prof. Carlton E. Brett is one of the most diverse working American geoscientists. His worldwide reputation is not only due to his enormous productivity in many different fields of Earth sciences, but also to the introduction of new theories. His work includes studies on paleontology, colonization of ancient sea-floors, event and sequence stratigraphy, ecology, sedimentology, analyses of sedimentary basins, evolutionary patterns and taphonomy. Comparisons of Devonian rocks from different areas will be the main target of joint research together with his German colleagues.

Professor Briggs has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the Cambrian explosion, the phylogeny of arthropods, the nature of conodonts, the controls on soft tissue fossilization, and the preservation of organic molecules in the rock record. He has pioneered a combination of new experimental approaches and chemical and mineralogical analyses to research into the fossilization of soft-tissues. During his stay in Germany, he intends to work on the preservation of fossil insects and on insect phylogeny as well as on the arthropods of the Devonian Hunsrück Slate.

Professor Brigham-Grette is a leading international paleoclimatologist. She has made substantial contributions to our current understanding of the Earth´s climatic history, in particular in the Arctic. She is a key player in developing international geosciences, for instance as heads of the Past Global Changes (PAGES) project and the US Polar Research Board. During her stay in Germany, she focuses on the publication of results recently obtained in northeastern Russia and on the development of new research projects jointly with several German collaborators.

Professor Chandrajith is an internationally highly recognized scientist and academic teacher in Environmental Sciences with a combination of aquatic biogeochemistry and medical effects on populations. He has largely contributed to new understandings of chronic kidney disease in relation to water chemistry. Prof. Chandrajith has also developed new methods for evaluation of groundwater-seawater exchange in near-shore aquifers. His innovative work with stable isotope systematics and aqueous geochemistry has helped to advance early recognition of serious and large-scale groundwater deterioration. Further collaborations at FAU include innovative work with stable isotope systematics and aqueous geochemistry that helped to advance early recognition of ground and surface water deterioration.

Dr. Chiappe (Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, USA) is an internationally outstanding specialist on dinosaurs and fossil birds. Many of his research activities resulted in new and important contributions to the origin and early evolution of birds and the biology of dinosaurs, based on his excavations in Argentina, USA, Madagscar, Mongolia and China. In cooperation with paleontologists in Munich he will study a new, small raptorial dinosaur from the Jurassic of Bavaria, and investigate the relationships of Archaeopteryx with primitive birds from China and Madagascar.

Professor Çiner’s research is primarily concerned with climate-driven surface processes and tectonic movements on different timescales that impact the evolution of Earth’s topography. He has made important contributions to two timely topics of modern geoscience highly relevant for the identification of long-term geologic hazards and risk assessments. Firstly, he has studied the tectonic evolution of sedimentary basin fills along the Anatolian Plateau. Secondly, he has used cosmogenic nuclide dating (10Be) to specify landscape evolution in tectonically active regions. In Germany, Professor Çiner will continue the study of these important subjects.

Professor Clarke is well known internationally for her research on the origin and early evolution of birds. Her work has fundamentally shaped our understanding of the evolutionary and ecological roots of modern vertebrate diversity. During her stay in Germany, Professor Clarke intends to analyze the large-scale patterns of vertebrate diversity over the past 60 million years, as well as to study the evolutionary history of the bird song.

Professor Fortelius is a leading international authority in the study of past terrestrial ecosystems and the importance of deep-time perspectives for the understanding of modern environments and the future of our planet. In his transdisciplinary approach he combines paleontology with evolutionary biology and ecosystems research, and he is well-known for the development of the concept of "ecometrics" for integrative climate change biology. During his time in Germany, he will collaborate with colleagues from Berlin to study past and modern terrestrial environments of Africa.

It was around 250 million years ago, during the transition from the Palaeozoic to the Mesozoic, that the greatest mass extinction took place ever to occur in the Earth’s history: An estimated 80-90% of all species disappeared for ever. Fossil marine organisms have yielded most of the insights on this event. In contrast, only little is known about changes on land, and in particular among vertebrates. Jörg Fröbisch aims to bridge this gap with his research. He is examining the relationships, palaeobiology and diversification patterns of the synapsids, alongside the reptiles the second major group within the amniotes, which comprise all vertebrates completely adapted to terrestrial life. The mammals evolved from the synapsids, and today, the latter are solely represented by the mammals. In the course of the Earth’s history, however, there were a large number of successful synapsid groups that are only remotely related to mammals, such as the sail-backed lizard Dimetrodon. Fröbisch combines palaeontological fieldwork with modern methods such as 3D-image technologies in order to gain new insights into the initial diversification of the early relatives of the mammals. With a view to today’s disappearance of species and biodiversity, his work is also of contemporary significance.

Prof. Philip Gingerich at the University of Michigan is a well-renowned vertebrate palaeontologist of international standing. One of his major contributions to the field has been Gingerich's extensive studies in the Tertiary of Wyoming in which he was clearly able to demonstrate gradual evolution in several mammalian lineages and to refute the major jumps in evolution that had been postulated by others. Similarly, his fieldwork in Pakistan and Egypt focuses on one of the most significant developments in mammalian phylogeny, the transition from terrestrial artiodactyls (hoofed mammals) to marine whales. Major changes in diet and locomotion were prerequisites before whales could adapt successfully to the marine realm. Instead of using feet, the whale's tail became the driving force behind propulsion in water. The most primitive whale, Pakicetus, first appeared in the Eocene and holds the clues to many questions regarding cetacean evolution. The geologically oldest tail of this genus will be studied in Bonn with Wighart v. Koenigswald. Pivotal to the understanding of this group is how and when the fluke of the cetacean tail evolved.

Professor Jolivet has contributed to novel understanding of fundamental processes in the deformation of the continental lithosphere at convergent margin and the rheology of subduction zones. He has a long record of advancing our understanding of the role of subduction dynamics and tectonics through a combination of field and laboratory work and creative joint analysis of geological, petrological, and geophysical constraints. During his stay in Germany, he will be working on understanding the geodynamics of the Mediterranean, addressing issues such as sea level change by merging archaeological records and past climate to predict future evolution.

How will the climate change in the near future and what will be the environmental impact? Wolfram Kürschner addresses this question by looking into the past. He uses fossil plants in an innovative way to reconstruct the natural dynamics of atmospheric CO² and its climatic effect; his publications are landmarks in this field. He is also interested in a number of related fields, in particular in the evolution of the C4-photosynthetic pathway in land plants as a response to longterm environmental changes. In the joint research project this scientific problem will be investigated using a variety of palaeobotanical, geochemical and physiological methods.

Prof. David Lordkipanidze is the lead investigator of the extraordinary paleoanthropological site of Dmanisi, Georgia, which has yielded the treasure of a unique series of 1.8 million years old hominin fossils. His discoveries document the first migrations of hominins out of Africa and into Eurasia, having a great impact on our thinking about human evolution. During his stay in Germany, he is aiming at reconstructing the palaeoenvironment during the last 10 million years in Southern Caucasus to achieve a more holistic understanding of the early phases of human evolution and expansions.

Professor Luo is the internationally leading expert on evolutionary morphology of the earliest mammals. He has revolutionized the picture of early mammalian evolution with the discovery of extremely well preserved new Mesozoic mammals exhibiting a completely unexpected degree of ecomorphological diversity. In Germany, he will focus his research on the evolution of Jurassic mammals in order to gain fundamental new insights into the macroevolutionary pattern of basal mammals within a highly resolved phylogeny.

Professor Mojzsis is well known internationally for his research to understand the origin of life on earth. His studies are field-, laboratory- or modeling-based and include not only the oldest rocks on earth but also other planets of the solar systems, exoplanets and meteorites. During his stay in Germany, Professor Mojzsis will investigate strata related to meteorite impacts, analyze pyrite grains that yield clues to the early sulphur cycle on earth and conduct research about the earliest continents.

Prof. Okay is an expert in tectonics and metamorphic petrology. He was a pioneer in identifying subducted continental crust at the surface. He is also a leader in Mediterranean geology, where levels of earthquake risk are high. His work is therefore of relevance to both the general public and the Earth Science community. Together with his host Prof. Handy, he seeks to understand processes underlying the unusually dynamic system of small tectonic plates, ocean basins and mountain belts that make up the Mediterranean area.

Professor Nicholas Pinter's research focuses on magnification of flood hazard as a result of man made and natural changes to river systems. On the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers he has made seminal contributions by documenting the worsening of flooding over time due to river engineering and how theses trend can be manifested in flood-frequency calculations. His approach can be considered as an independent test of model-driven analyses and documents how overreliance on structural flood protection may lead to flood hazard misinterpretations.

Professor Reisz is an internationally recognized leader in the study of the morphology, paleobiology, and interrelationships of late Paleozoic amphibians, reptiles, and non-mammalian synapsids from Europe, North America, and South Africa. He has also published important work on a diversity of other fossil vertebrates, ranging form Devonian lungfishes to Jurassic dinosaurs. His current research on dinosaur embryology and turtle origins forms the focus of his promising research and collaboration in Germany.

Professor Rose from the John Hopkins University at Baltimore is an expert on Eocene mammals from North America. For many years he has conducted excavations in Wyoming and collected data which allow detailed reconstructions of the extinct animals as well as of their paleoenvironment. Together with Wighart v. Koenigswald from Bonn he will compare the fossil skeleton of an Eocene pantolestid from Wyoming with the skeletons found in Messel near Darmstadt. The question is whether the specific adaptations on both continents developed in the same directions although the populations were separated for at least 5 million years due to continental drift.

Professor Schmid is one of the leading earth scientists of our day. His seminal contributions in tectonics range from the rheology of rocks to the evolution of continents. His approach is decidedly interdisciplinary, and integrates fieldwork on rock structures with geophysics, isotope geochronology and stratigraphy. Currently, he seeks to understand the processes that build mountains, launching a book on the Alpine mountains of Europe.

Professor Selden is an international authority on fossil arthropods who has made outstanding contributions towards our understanding of how these animals first emerged onto land over 400 million years ago, as well as documenting major evolutionary advances among spiders and their arachnid relatives. During his stay in Germany Professor Selden plans to collaborate with his host on a major textbook about fossil arachnids, as well as the relevant volume of the world-renowned Treatise on Invertebrate Palaeontology - a publication series for which he is also Editor-in-Chief.

Hans-Dieter Sues has worked on numerous groups of land vertebrates and covered all important aspects of palaeontology and evolutionary biology. Unparalleled among vertebrate palaeontologists, his work has focused on topics as wide-ranging as the origin of mammals, dinosaurs, crocodiles, and many more primitive reptiles. Apart from the evolutionary origin of major groups, he has also analyzed the palaeoecology and feeding strategies of herbivores as well as the change of faunas through the Mesozoic. His projects are not only very diversified, but also form long-lasting contributions to the field, which have set standards in many cases. At the Natural History Museum in Stuttgart, he will continue his long-term project on the vertebrate faunas of the Triassic, focussing on new German finds.

Professor Summons is an internationally renowned leader in organic geochemistry and geobiology. He studies molecular fossils as tracers of Earth's earliest life in some of the oldest sedimentary rocks. His work has profoundly influenced our conception of the timing of the advent of oxygenic photosynthesis and the evolution of eukaryotes. During his stay in Germany, Professor Summons will be working on the identification of novel biomarkers of cyanobacteria in order to track this important group of microorganisms in ancient ecosystems.

Professor John Suppe is one of the foremost structural geologists. He and his students have made ground-breaking advances in our understanding of the deformation of the Earth's crust. These advances have come largely from the development of new theory in combination with conceptually novel observations and analyses in actively deforming regions such as California, Taiwan, far western China and the Niger delta, as well as the planet Venus. Suppe is known for his founding and subsequent leadership in the field of "fault-related folding" which has shown in the last two decades that the large folds characteristic of the margins of compressive mountain belts form by a rich variety of processes involving the propagation and displacement of non-planar faults, in contrast with classic ideas that folds form by buckling of layered media. Thus we now understand that large folds grow by the summation of the displacements in thousands of large earthquakes, each contributing a few meters of sudden fold growth. Fault-related folding theory has successfully predicted the existence of a number of counter-intuitive phenomena that are now widely observed. Furthermore this theory has led to substantial practical applications in the assessment of earthquake-hazards, for example the recognition of major hidden active faults under Los Angeles, and new techniques of analysis of seismic images used in petroleum exploration and development worldwide. Professor Suppe has also made seminal advances in understanding the large-scale strength of the mountain belts and of great faults. In the 1980s he and his students made the startling discovery that the regional compression is nearly perpendicular to the great San Andreas and Sumatra faults, suggesting these faults are exceedingly weak relative to laboratory friction measurements. This discovery has been a prime motivation for the present San Andreas Drilling Project (SAFOD). In addition Professor Suppe and several of his colleagues at Princeton developed critical-taper wedge mechanics, which is arguably the most important advance in our understanding of the large-scale mechanics of mountain belts of the last half century. Critical-taper wedge theory has demonstrated that many mountain belts deform until they reach a critical regional surface slope governed by their strength. The mechanics of this process is analogous to that of the deformed wedges of soil or snow that develop in front of moving bulldozers. Suppe has recently made an additional theoretical break through by showing how to directly determine the absolute large-scale strength of mountain belts and of major faults from observed wedge tapers. Knowing these strengths is of fundamental importance to many fields but has been notoriously difficult to determine, with one of the few direct measurements at great depth coming from the German KTB deep borehole. Professor Suppe holds the honorary Blair Professorship of Geology at Princeton University, was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, is an Honorary Professor of Nanjing University, and has been a visiting professor at Caltech (twice), National Taiwan University (twice), and University of Barcelona. He was selected as a Guest Investigator of the NASA Magellan Mission to Venus, is a Guggenheim Fellow, was selected Highly Cited Researcher by ISI, and has twice been cited for the best publication in five years in structural geology and tectonics by the Geological Society of America. During his stay in Germany Professor Suppe will be exploring issues of fault strength. Using geologic observations and new global computer models of the Earth's lithosphere and mantle he will address the longstanding problem of "Why the crust is so strong yet great faults are so weak" in collaboration with his host Professor Hans-Peter Bunge at the Geophysics group of LMU in Munich.

Professor Zachos is a paleoceanographer and stable isotope geochemist, and is well known internationally for his outstanding research in Cenozoic paleoceanography. He has made important contributions toward identifying the mechanisms responsible for driving long- and short-term changes in global climate, and impacts of abrupt climate change on ecosystems. In Germany he continues his research on Eocene hyperthermals that provide a unique opportunity to gain insight into the long-term impacts of rapidly rising CO² levels on modern climate, ocean carbonate chemistry, and biotas.