Andreas Ernst: Candidate for the ESSA Management Committee 2008

Andreas Ernst is one of the directors of the Center for Environment Systems Research (CESR) at the University of Kassel. He is responsible for the Socio-Environmental Systems Analysis and Modeling (SESAM) working group. He has lead several national and international research projects in the domain of social simulation and the coupling of natural and socio-economic models. Andreas Ernst served as chairman of the Section on Environmental Psychology of the German Psychological Association from 2003 - 2007. He is a co-editor of the book series “Social Science Simulations” of the Metropolis-Verlag.

Trained as a cognitive and environmental psychologist, he spent one year at the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh/USA, before earning his doctorate from the University of Freiburg/Germany with a computer model of human behavior in a commons dilemma situation. After assistant and associate professorship positions in Freiburg, he now holds the chair of Environmental Systems Analysis in Kassel.

His research interests are in computer modeling of motivational and cognitive aspects of behavior and learning, phenomena of social interaction, especially in resource conflicts, the application of psychological decision models to spatially explicit large-scale domains, phenomena of complexity, psychological and economic aspects of innovation and innovative behavior, and in interdisciplinary and integrative research methods.

In the ESSA Management Committee, Andreas Ernst would like to contribute by working for a growing number of members of ESSA and for a high profile and reputation of the association.