Ilona Otto is a newly appointed professor in societal impacts of climate change at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change at the University of Graz. She leads a research group focusing on social complexity and system transformation. The group’s ambition is to use complex science theory and novel research methods to analyse social dynamic processes and interventions that are likely to spark rapid social changes necessary to radically transform the interactions of human societies with nature and ecosystem services in the next 30 years. She spent the past 10 years at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Otto is a social scientist by training. She uses various research methods including social surveys, case studies, behavioral experiments, and simulations in analysing problems related to global environment changes, development, adaptation, and sustainability. Otto is a principal investigator in an EU Horizon 2020 Project CASCADES: Cascading Climate Risks: Towards Adaptive and Resilient European Societies. She also coordinates a newly founded Climate Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) Project REBOOST: A Boost for Rural Lignite Regions. She led a chapter on human health in the World Bank Report ‘Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal’ and she led the Report on Modelling the Impact of Climate Change on Poverty at a Subnational Scale that was contracted by the World Bank.