Irina Artemieva

Irina M. Artemieva is Professor of Geophysics at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel (Germany), Distinguished Professor at the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), and Distinguished Professor at SinoProbe at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (Beijing).

She was dismissed as President of the European Geosciences Union (2023-2024), for breaking their code of conduct, after having served as the Vice-President (2022-2023).

Education
Artemieva graduated from the Physics Faculty of Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1984, having earned BSc and MSc degrees in physics. As a student, she represented the university team in cross-country skiing and sport orienteering, and worked as an official English interpreter at the Olympic Games (Moscow, 1980), the International Geological Congress (Moscow, 1984), and at numerous international scientific conferences in Moscow. She received a PhD degree in physics and mathematics with a minor in geophysics in 1987 from the Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where she later worked as junior, senior and leading scientist. During the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union followed by financial instability in Russian academic institutions, Artemieva had research contracts with the Schlumberger, Anglo-American, and De Beers companies.

In 2007, she defended her habilitation thesis in the University of Copenhagen (official referees Professors R. Frei, Sierd Cloetingh, K. Furlong) and was the second person in her institute to receive a doctor scientiarum degree (analogue to habilitation degree in Germany) in geosciences.

Research and publications
Artemieva's research concentrates on the lithospheric structure of the Archean cratons and Precambrian geodynamics, from the Archean Earth to modern collisional tectonics, back-arc basins and oceanic lithosphere. She has worked on the global and regional structure of the Earth's crust and the lithosphere, lithosphere thickness, thermal and compositional heterogeneity of lithosphere mantle, lithosphere formation and secular evolution, and lithospheric control on kimberlite magmatism and melting of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Her first-authored paper on the thermal state of the continents from 2001 is one of the highest cited publications on the lithosphere, and her publication record includes papers on key questions in geodynamics and plate tectonics. Artemieva was the first to develop a global digital database of the continental lithosphere thermal thickness and ages, and to apply methods to evaluate heterogeneity in the thermal state, chemical composition and thickness of the lithosphere. She was included in the 2020-2022 Stanford lists of the "World 2% most influential scientists".

Artemieva is the author of the research monograph The lithosphere: An interdisciplinary approach, which presents a synthesis of the current state-of-knowledge in lithosphere studies. Artemieva has supervised and mentored numerous MSc and PhD students and postdoctoral fellows.

As principal investigator of research projects in geophysics, Artemieva has raised between 2005 and 2018 in open peer-review calls more than 3 million euro (>20 mln dkk) from the Danish Research Council (DFF and FNU), Carlsbergfondet (Denmark), the University of Copenhagen (the Freja and the PhD grants), and the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (the Lehmann Grant). Since 1997 she has served as consultant to several diamond exploration companies, and has raised since 2019 significant funding from the Chinese academic agencies.

Awards and honours
Artemieva was elected member of Academia Europaea in 2007 and was elected member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in 2014. When she was elected Fellow of the Geological Society of America in 2012, she was the first person in a Danish university to receive the honour. In 2021, Artemieva was awarded the Augustus Love Medal of the European Geosciences Union "for her outstanding research contributions to our understanding of the complex processes that control the evolution, thermal structure, stability, and dynamic topography of the continental lithosphere". By nomination by the Danish Research Council, she was included in the AcademiaNet - Expert Database for Outstanding Women in Academia.


 * 2000 Elected Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society
 * 2007 Elected to the Academia Europaea
 * 2012 Elected Fellow of the Geological Society of America
 * 2014 Elected to the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
 * 2018 Elected to the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences
 * 2021 Awarded the Augustus Love Medal of the European Geosciences Union

Career
In 1999-2001, after moving out of Russia, Artemieva was employed as Associate Professor in the Uppsala University, Sweden, followed by her work in EOST of the Strasbourg University, France in 2002. In 2003-2004 she worked as Senior Researcher at United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, CA, where she was earlier an annual 3–4 months long visitor since 1995. In 2005 Artemieva got position of Associate Professor in the University of Copenhagen, funded by her personal research grants of 2005-2006 and 2007-2009 of Carlsbergfondet, Denmark.

In 2010 Artemieva was one of six winners of the open-call Freja Grant of the University of Copenhagen in Natural Sciences, which gave her a permanent academic position. In 2013 she won the position of Professor of Geophysics in the open call of the University of Copenhagen. She successfully led funding bids in 2011-2013 and 2014-2018 open-calls for "Large research grants" from the Danish national funding agencies (FNU and DFF). These prestigious grants were among the only awards in geosciences in this competition in Denmark in those years. On 29 July 2019, however, Artemieva was dismissed by the University of Copenaghen, with the management allegedly claiming that she had repeatedly failed to fulfil administrative and teaching duties: some geoscientists disagreed with the dismissal.

In 2019-2020 Artemieva was visiting professor at Stanford University, CA (USA); her sabbatical stay funded by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters was essentially disturbed by the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020 she moved to the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research (Kiel, Germany). In 2022 Artemieva was invited by the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences as Distinguished Professor to the SinoProbe National Laboratory, followed by her earlier affiliation since 2019 as Distinguished Professor with the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan).

Leadership positions
Artemieva has held leadership positions in large-scale international science organizations and programs. She was Science Coordinator and Executive Board member of the European Science Foundation EUROPROBE program (1999-2001), which involved about two thousand scientists from across Europe. Within the European Geosciences Union (EGU), she served on the EGU Council and EGU Program Committee in 2013-2017 as Geodynamics Division President. She has been member of the EGU Arthur Holmes and Augustus Love medal committees of the European Geosciences Union. She was also referee for the Crafoord Prize of the Swedish Academy of Sciences.

In 2022, Artemieva was elected President of the European Geosciences Union, and served as Vice-President (incoming President) the first year after the election. She was President of the European Geosciences Union from 2023-2024. In May 2024 following a resolution from the volunteer council, she was dismissed as President of the EGU following a large majority vote for breaking the EGU’s Code of Conduct.

Artemieva is Task Force leader in the International Lithosphere Program (2019-2024), Program Officer of the International Heat Flow Commission (2019-2024), chairperson of the Danish National Committee for Lithosphere Research (since 2016), Danish Executive Committee Member of the International Science Council (2018), Danish co-representative of EU "European Plate Observing System" (EPOS) in 2008-2017 the Plate Observing System, and she has taken active role in several large-scale international and U.S. scientific programs, such as SCEC, EARTHSCOPE and CIDER.

Artemieva has served as panel member and panel chair in geosciences in national funding agencies of Sweden, Ireland, France, Portugal; as chair and member of re-accreditation panels in the universities and centers of excellence in Portugal and Croatia, and as referee to national funding agencies in many European and American countries. She is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Geodynamics (Elsevier) (since 2016), associated editor in Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) since 2014, and has earlier served as associated editor in Tectonophysics (2006-2020) (Elsevier), topical editor of the EGU journal Solid Earth (2010-2016), and she is member of advisory committees of national geophysical journals in several countries.