ProfessorJoeri Rogelj

Prof. Joeri Rogelj is Director of Research at the Grantham Institute and Professor of Climate Science & Policy at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London. He studies how society can tackle climate change. He has written articles on 1.5°C pathways, carbon budgets, net zero targets, climate justice, and climate agreements such as the Paris Agreement. He regularly serves as an author on reports of the United Nations and in multiple government science advisory roles.

Science policy
Prof. Rogelj is a leading contributor to international scientific assessments that inform climate policy. He is a long-serving lead author on the annual Emissions Gap Reports by the UN Environment Programme and on reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), He first served as a contributor to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report focussing on the assessment of carbon budgets (2010-2014), then as a Coordinating Lead Author on mitigation pathways for the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (2016-2018), and, most recently, as a Lead Author for the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment (2018-2021). He currently serves as Lead Author on the IPCC's Seventh Assessment. 

In 2019, he was the youngest member serving on the UN Secretary-General's Climate Science Advisory Group; and from 2022 to 2026, he served as one of the fifteen members of the inaugural European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, which informs and advises the European Union on its climate action. 

He also provides scientific evidence for courts or other legal bodies, for example, in support of Children vs Climate Crisis in which sixteen children from across the world petition the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to hold five of the world’s economic powers accountable for inaction on climate change, or providing expert input into the Belgian Klimaatzaak which requested the Belgian state to strengthen its climate action.

Education and earlier appointments
Joeri Rogelj holds a PhD (2013) in climate science from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and an MSc in Engineering (2003) and a postgraduate degree in Cultures and Development Studies (2005), both from KU Leuven, Belgium. Before joining the Grantham Institute, he held research positions at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK, Germany), as a post-doctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, and as a Senior Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA, Austria) with whom he continues to collaborate. His professional background further includes three years as a project engineer in the field of rural electrification and drinking water systems in Rwanda, including leading the Rwanda Hydropower Atlas study.

Recognition
In 2021, Joeri Rogelj was awarded the Early Career Scientist Award (Europe) from the International Science Council for exceptional contributions to science and international scientific collaboration by an early career researcher. In 2016, he received the inaugural Piers Sellers Award for his world-leading contributions to solution-focused climate research. Earlier, in 2014, he received the ETH Medal for his outstanding doctoral dissertation, and the 2011 Peccei Award for outstanding research by a young scientist. Since 2019, he has been a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher representing the top 1% impactful researchers in the field of Energy & Environment.

Service
Prof. Rogelj serves as Member of the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science magazine and Member of the Editorial Board for Environmental Research Letters.