Dr. Karolina Begusch-Pfefferkorn, a biologist by training, is Head of the Unit ‘Environmental and Earth System Sciences, including climate research’, at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research in the Department for Basic Research and Research Infrastructures. She has been a member of the ESFRI SWG Environment since 2013 and is one of the Austrian delegates to the ESFRI Forum, as well as the Austrian delegate to the Horizon Europe Programme Committee for Cluster 6 and an expert for Cluster 5.