Bert J.M. de Vries has a background in Theoretical Chemistry. He is co-founder and member of the Institute for Energy and Environment (IVEM) at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, where he received his Ph.D. on sustainable resource use. Since 1990 he has been a senior scientist at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL, formerly MNP and RIVM). He has contributed to and published extensively on resource and in particular energy analysis, modelling and policy; climate and global change modelling; and modelling for sustainable development. He has been actively involved in modelling and scenario construction for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Since 2003 he has been Professor of Global Change and Energy at Utrecht University in The Netherlands (http://www.uu.nl/staff/BJMdeVries/0 ). His research expertise and publications are in resource and energy analysis, modelling and policy; climate and global change modelling; and complex systems modelling for sustainable development. He has retired officially in 2013, but is still engaged in research projects on, notably, sustainability and worldviews, and on the connection between sustainable development and the financial system.

He has co-edited several books, including Perspectives on Global Change: The TARGETS Approach (1997, Cambridge University Press) and Mappae Mundi: Humans and their Habitats in a Long-Term Socio-Ecological Perspective (2002, Amsterdam University Press). He published the textbook Sustainability Science, based on ten years of teaching the course Sustainable Development - An Integrating Perspective (2013, Cambridge University Press; see also www.sustainabilityscience.eu/textbook).