Jan Rotmans is one of the founders of Integrated Assessment (IA), and has outstanding experience in IA modeling, scenario-building, uncertainty management and transition management. During the past twenty years he has led a diversity of innovative projects in the field of climate change, global change, sustainable development and transitions and system innovations. He is founder and director of the International Centre for Integrative Studies (ICIS) (1998) at Maastricht University. Since 2004 he is a full professor in Transitions and Transition Management at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where he founded the DRIFT-institute: Dutch Research Institute For Transitions. He is vice-president of The Integrated Assessment Society (TIAS), and founder and director of the Dutch Knowledge Network on System Innovations and Transitions (KSI). Jan Rotmans is founder of two scientific journals, Environmental Modeling and Assessment and Integrated Assessment, and has published 30 books and more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific articles in journals and books in the fields of environment, sustainability, governance, transitions and system innovations.

To stimulate transitions, he launches various social initiatives. For example, together with Marjan Minnesma, he founded Urgenda, the organization that, among other things, successfully sued the Dutch government, forcing it to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He also founded organizations such as Nederland Kantelt, Zorgeloos, Education in Transition, and the Gideonsbende. He works with social entrepreneurs in the Rotterdam region on breakthrough projects under the banner of TeamNXT, and he is involved in making the Port of Rotterdam more sustainable. His motivation is to create as much positive impact as possible, hands-on, in the truest sense of Rotterdam.

With his expertise, he can develop guidelines for transitions, enabling people from all segments of the population to implement them. If anyone can lead the Netherlands, and thus Europe, out of chaos and towards a sustainable and inclusive future, it is Jan Rotmans.