Stefan Wolfgang Pickl is Vice President of the German Committee for Disaster Reduction (Deutsches Komitee für Katastrophenvorsorge e.V., DKKV) and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe, BBK). Furthermore, he is a member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering, acatech.
Serving as President of the Scientific Committee of the Franco-German University and holding an honorary professorship at the University of Nottingham Malaysia, he also serves as an Adjunct Professor at Sunway University. Currently, he is a Visiting Scientist at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC).
Pickl studied Theoretical Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Philosophy at TU Darmstadt and completed his diploma thesis as an ERASMUS scholar at EPF Lausanne. He was among the first researchers to develop a mathematical model for the modeling, simulation and game-theoretical optimisation of the Kyoto Protocol, for which he received the Dissertation Prize of the German Society for Operations Research. In the same year, he was awarded the Göttingen Peace Prize as a member of the IANUS group. He earned his habilitation at the University of Cologne on the topic of “Analysis, Control and Optimisation of Complex Systems,” integrating game-theoretical and System Dynamics (SD) approaches into algorithmic solution methods and heuristics. His research has included stays at Los Alamos, the Santa Fe Institute, the University of New Mexico, the University of California at Berkeley, CENETIX (Center for Network Innovation and Experimentation) at NPS and MIT.
At the age of 36, he was appointed to a full professorship in Operations Research at the Bundeswehr University Munich, where Frederick Vester also taught. There, Pickl established the COMTESSA Competence Center (Core Competence Center for Operations Research, Management Tenacity Experience – Safety & Security ALLIANCE).
ALLIANCE reflects the broad profile of the research group, in which each member represents an “A” – such as Analysis, Awareness, Agility, Algorithm, Adversarial or Anticipation – and which includes Germany’s youngest junior professor in the field of AI. Systems thinking (“Network of Networks”) serves as the unifying theme of this dynamic research group.
Pickl is a member of the HOLM (House of Logistics and Mobility) Science Forum at Frankfurt Airport, where he initiated think tanks and executive seminars on “Risk Management, Energy Security, System Dynamics, Leadership & AI.” He is also a founding member of the international PhD graduate school NITIM (The International Graduate School on Networks, Information Technology & Innovation Management).
In 2005, he initiated the George Leitmann Lecture. George Leitmann, who passed away in 2025, was one of the last surviving interrogators of the Nuremberg Trials. As the founding president of the Alexander von Humboldt Association of America, Leitmann was a dedicated advocate for peace talks throughout his life.
For Pickl, an honorary member of the German Operations Research Society, “The Limits to Growth” has always been a nexus in the field of Operations Research that is still relevant today, after more than 50 years. His extensive research work could also be titled “Limits of Conflict & Optimisation.”