PD Dr. Kirsten Thonicke has been deputy head of the “Earth System Analysis” research department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) since 2011. With a “Diplom” in Physical Geography, she earned her Ph.D. in 2003 from the University of Potsdam in the field of Geoecology, focusing on global fire modeling in dynamic vegetation models, and completed her habilitation in 2019 on vegetation changes under climate and land-use change. She continues to study changes in various fire regimes under climate and land-use change. Her research also focuses on the Amazon rainforest as a continental and global tipping element, as well as the role of biodiversity in the resilience of terrestrial ecosystems. Since 2021, she has served as the spokesperson for the Leibniz Research Network on Biodiversity, which focuses on transferring knowledge from biodiversity research to policy and society. In 2022 and 2024, she published “10 Must Knows from Biodiversity Science” in collaboration with an international group of authors.