| Helga Kromp-Kolb: When Science Goes Public |
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bridges vol. 11, September 2006 / People in the Spotlight
A common feeling about university professors is that they are a somewhat remote, weird folk relegated to ivory towers of abstract, largely irrelevant reasoning, shielding themselves from the trivialities of public discourse by erecting communicative and social walls of incomprehensible, self-reflective language. Few people among the Austrian academic elite could serve as a better counter-example than Helga Kromp-Kolb, professor of meteorology at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna. One of Kromp-Kolb's main research interests is climate change, a topic that has been increasingly present in politics, the media, and the public under the label "greenhouse effect" and "global warming."
And whereas many scientists tend to react with a mixture of slight contempt and disbelief when questions they investigate are discussed by laypersons, Kromp-Kolb has actively fostered and participated in many policy debates that probe the core of her research interests. Her readiness to communicate with the wider public was the main reason why, in 2005, she was awarded the title, "scientist of the year," by the Austrian association of journalists in education and science. |
Becoming Austrian scientist of the year is only one recent milestone in a successful and straightforward scientific career that has brought Kromp-Kolb public and professional attention and, among many other responsibilities, her position as director of the university senate. The daughter of two diplomats, she attended high school in Austria and India before embarking on her studies of meteorology at the University of Vienna. This field provided her with an ideal way to combine her predilections for natural phenomena and mathematical rigor. She obtained her Ph.D. in 1971, then embarked on research on air pollutants and air quality. These fields were a lucky choice, for in the course of the next two decades, they would move from the brink of established disciplines into a broad new mainstream of environmental research, allowing Kromp-Kolb to develop and gradually extend her interests in an expanding academic environment. She concluded her Habilitation in 1982 and accepted a full professorship at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in 1995, where she has remained ever since. Kromp-Kolb has an enormous range of scientific affiliations, among them, the Austrian Academy of Sciences. An important part of her scientific activity is absorbed by government counseling; she has been a member of several advisory councils at different Austrian ministries, covering climate change, waste, atomic energy, and environmental protection in the context of defense.
