Katherine Richardson is a Professor in Biological Oceanography and leader of Sustainability Science Centre at Copenhagen University. Kathrine is also an adj. Senior Researcher at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine, USA.

In 2009, Kathrine was Chairman of the Scientific Steering Committee for a large international scientific conference, CLIMATECHANGE: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions hosted by the International Alliance of Research Universitites (IARU) and in 2014, she was Chair of the Scientific Steering Committee for the IARU hosted congress Global Challenges: Achieving Sustainability.

Research

The overall focus of Katherine’s research is to better understanding of the role of biological processes and biodiversity on the cycling of carbon in the upper ocean and how this impacts food webs and the global carbon cycle. She is currently leading the Queen Margrethe and Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Ocean, Climate, and Society (www.rocs.ku.dk).

She is also a core researcher in an international research team focusing on identifying “Planetary Boundaries”, i.e. identifying how much of specific Earth System Services that can “safely” be appropriated by humans.