08 - AU

Aarhus University has 37,500 students;  about 1,900 PhD students - of which one in four has a foreign nationality - and close to 700 postdoctoral scholars together with 8,000 employees (2012). AU has four faculties which cover the entire research spectrum – basic research, applied research, strategic research and research based advice to the authorities.

In recent years AU has been moving up the most important university ranking lists. In 2014 the university was number 68 at the Leiden Ranking, and number 138 of 17,000 universities on the Times Higher Education World University Ranking (2013). In 2015, AU was no. 27 on the U.S. News Best Global Universities ranking list and no. 7^th in Europe within the subject Environment/Ecology (http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/search?region=e...).  Internationalization is part of the University’s mission and it continuously works to strengthen the international profile of the University through a series of initiatives which will increase international research partnerships and the number of international students. The University is involved in environmental monitoring and impact assessments and advices the Danish and Greenlandic Governments on numerous issues related to climate and environment. Aarhus University has the established Arctic Research Centre (ARC) in order to address on-going changes in the Arctic from a multidisciplinary perspective, comprising academics from social, natural, and health sciences. ARC is partner in the Arctic Science Partnership (www.asp-net.org) which is a research and training collaboration between University of Manitoba, Canada, the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources and ARC.

Role in the project

Institute of Bioscience and the Arctic Research Centre will be involved in WP 3, deploying new monitoring systems to improve the existing climate monitoring program Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring (www.G-EM.dk). We will also contribute to WP6 demonstrating how ecosystem models and existing Arctic observation systems can be used to synthesize data and improve decision making by various stakeholders primarily in Greenland.