SFI External Professor André de Roos was named the King Carl XVI Gustaf Professor in Environmental Science for 2021-22.

The prestigious appointment, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, brings recipients to Sweden for a one-year residency "to create links between Swedish academic institutes and distinguished foreign researchers that are able to contribute to the renewal of Swedish environmental sciences." De Roos, a Professor of Theoretical Ecology at the University of Amsterdam, will spend a year researching and teaching at the interdisciplinary IceLab at Umeå University.

"Within this research department there is a strong emphasis on unraveling the functioning of aquatic ecosystems," de Roos commented in a University of Amsterdam press release. "Climate change is going especially fast in this northern environment. This means that the many lakes in the north of Sweden are exposed to a rapidly increasing input of organic matter because the soil around the lakes thaws and there is thus more run-off of organic matter. One of the topics I will be working on is the effect of a shift from internal (due to algae and aquatic plants) to allochthonous (due to bacteria that convert the input of organic matter) productivity on the ecological community in lakes."

De Roos, who spent three months at SFI in 2019, will join SFI alum Eric Libby, a former Omidyar Fellow who is now an assistant professor at Umeå University.

Read the University of Amsterdam's press release (December 11, 2020)

Read more about de Roos's research into complex aquatic ecosystems in "Re-thinking tipping points in ecosystems and beyond" (February 28, 2020)

Prof. André de Roos presents his work for Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf (July 1, 2022)