The plenary opening keynote of this year’s TechMed event will be by Prof. Dr. Maarten van Aalst, whom is the new Director General and Chief Science Officer of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) since February this year. We know Maarten since he did hold the Princess Margriet Chair in Climate and Disaster Resilience at the University of Twente in the Faculty of Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation (ITC) before he moved to the KNMI. Besides his chair at the University of Twente, Maarten van Aalst was also director of the International Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, and one of the coordinating lead author’s of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The TechMed Centre know that Maarten’s ambition is to contribute to a better world by tackling the major challenges facing the Netherlands and the world. We are therefore very honored that he is willing to give this opening lecture and are sure that he will inspire many of the attendees.
Health and climate - the missing links
Climate greatly affects human health, but the emissions from the health and care sector also greatly affect our changing climate. This keynote will highlight emerging risks and opportunities, based on the recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Biography
Maarten van Aalst is Director General and Chief Science Officer of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and full professor of Climate and Disaster Resilience at the University of Twente's Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC).
He is a member of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change and Coordinating Lead Author at the IPCC. Prior to joining KNMI in February 2023, he led the International Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.