Jun.-Prof. Wolfram Barfuss
Professional experience
Wolfram Barfuss is a sustainability system scientist with a doctoral degree in theoretical physics from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Humboldt University Berlin (2019). Before joining ZEF in 2023, he was a postdoctoral scientist at the Tübingen AI Center at the University of Tübingen (2021-2023), the School of Mathematics at the University of Leeds (2020-2021), and the Max Planck Insitute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig (2019-2020).
Barfuss heads the Argelander chair of the University of Bonn's Transdisciplinary Research Area (TRA) Sustainable Futures. The Argelander professorships are high-profile tenure-track assistant professor positions newly created within the scope of the German Excellence Initiative. The research focus is Integrated System Modeling for Sustainability Transitions. The BarfussLab is a young, strongly evolving, interdisciplinary team crossing the boundaries of various research fields to identify critical leverage points to tackle collective action challenges for sustainability. How? Through collective learning for a sustainable future. Barfuss's work has been published in numerous high-profile academic journals and is occasionally taken up by the media.
Wolfram Barfuss is a founding member of the Earth Resilience and Sustainability Initiative, a joint undertaking led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Princeton University, and the Stockholm Resilience Centre. He is also a member of the German Physical Society, the TRAs Modeling and Individuals and Societies, the Center for Earth System Observation and Computational Analysis (CESOC), and the Cluster of Excellence PhenoRob.
Division/Group:
Integrated System Modeling (MODEL)
Further Information
- Governance
- Knowledge
- Institutions
- Sustainable use of natural resources
- Methods
Integrated System Modeling
Publications
- Collective cooperative intelligence by Barfuss W, Flack J, Gokhale CS, Hammond L, Hilbe C, Hughes E, Leibo JZ, Lenearts T, Leonard N, Levin S, Madhushani U, McAvoy A, Meylahn JM, Santos FP in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 122(25) e2319948121 (2025)
- Caring for the future can turn tragedy into comedy for long-term collective action under risk of collapse by Barfuss W, Donges JF, Vasconcelos VV, Kurths J, Levin SA in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 117(23), 12915-12922 (2020)
- When optimization for governing human-environment tipping elements is neither sustainable nor safe by Barfuss W, Donges JF, Lade SJ, Kurths J in Nature Communications 9, 2354 (2018)
- Deterministic limit of temporal difference reinforcement learning for stochastic games by Barfuss W, Donges JF, Kurths J in Physical Review E 99, 043305 (2019)
- Modeling the effects of environmental and perceptual uncertainty using deterministic reinforcement learning dynamics with partial observability by Barfuss W, Mann RP in Physical Review E 105, 3, 034409 (2022)
- Dynamical systems as a level of cognitive analysis of multi-agent learning - Algorithmic foundations of temporal-difference learning dynamics by Barfuss W in Neural Computing and Applications 34, 1653-1671 (2022)
- Reinforcement Learning Dynamics in the Infinite Memory Limit by Barfuss W in Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), Auckland, New Zealand, May 9–13 (2020)
- Stewardship of global collective behavior by Bak-Coleman J, Alfano M, Barfuss W, Bergstrom C, Centeno MA, Couzin ID, Donges JF, Galesic M, Gersick AS, Jacquet J, Kao A, Moran RE, Romanczuk P, Rubenstein DI, Tombak KJ, Van Bavel JJ, Weber EU in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 118(27), 2025764118 (2021)
- Multi-Agent Risks from Advanced AI by Hammond L, Chan A, Clifton J, Hoelscher-Obermaier J, Khan A, McLean E, Smith C, Barfuss W, Foerster J, Gavenčiak T, Han TA, Hughes E, Kovařík V, Kulveit J, Leibo JZ, Oesterheld C, Schroeder de Witt C, Shah N, Wellman M, Bova P, Cimpeanu T, Ezell C, Feuillade-Montixi Q, Franklin M, Kran E, Krawczuk I, Lamparth M, Lauffer N, Meinke A, Motwani S, Reuel A, Conitzer V, Dennis M, Gabriel I, Gleave A, Hadfield G, Haghtalab N, Kasirzadeh A, Krier S, Larson K, Lehman J, Parkes DC, Piliouras G, Rahwan I. Report (2025)
- AI for a Planet Under Pressure by Galaz, V., Schewenius, M., Donges, J.F., Fetzer, I., Zhivkoplias, E., Barfuss, W., Delannoy, L., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Gelbrecht, M., Heitzig, J. and Hentati-Sundberg, J., Kennedy, C., Knecht, N., Lotcheris, R., Mahecha, M., Merrie, A., Montero, D., McPhearson, T., Mustafa, A., Nyström, M., Purves, D., Rocha, J. C., Ryo, M., van der Salm, C., Seguan, S. T., Stephenson, A. B., Tellman, E., Tobar, F., Vadrot, A. Report (2025)