Prof Dr Robert Sausen

Robert Sausen was born in Lissingen in the Eifel in 1955 and attended the Cusanus Gymnasium in Wittlich, where he graduated in 1974. His talent for science became apparent as early as 1973, when he won the Rhineland-Palatinate state mathematics and computer science competition "Jugend forscht". From 1974, he studied physics, mathematics, computer science and atmospheric physics, first at the University of Kaiserslautern and later at ETH Zurich, where he graduated in physics in 1979. In 1983, he completed his doctorate in meteorology at the Technical University of Darmstadt on the subject of two-dimensional turbulence in the atmosphere. He then moved to the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg as a research assistant to Klaus Hasselmann, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics. There, and later as a university assistant at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg, he became an expert in global atmospheric dynamics and the development and operation of coupled atmosphere-ocean circulation models, on which he habilitated in 1991. In the same year, Robert Sausen moved to the DLR Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Oberpfaffenhofen, where he became head of the department "Atmospheric Dynamics" (now: "Earth System Modelling for Aeronautics, Space, Transport and Energy") and transferred his teaching activities to the LMU in Munich, where he was appointed adjunct professor in 2000.

During his years at DLR, Robert Sausen led the Institute of Atmospheric Physics to an internationally recognised leading role in the field of global modelling of the impact of transport on climate. He initiated and led a number of major European and national projects, initiated and organised the conference on "Transport, Aviation and Climate", was Chairman of the Munich Section of the German Meteorological Society and lead author of a chapter in the 1999 IPCC Special Report on the Climate Impact of Aviation. The IPCC team was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Until recently, Robert Sausen was significantly involved in assessments on the climate impact of aviation; under his leadership, the first series of tests to avoid contrails in operational flight operations took place in 2021. Most recently, he published a book "Climate Science Concepts Born in Hamburg" with former colleagues from Hamburg. He has left the scientific community with more than 130 peer-reviewed and widely cited articles, and has also supervised more than 30 PhD students over the years.