2025 Rydell Professorship

Dr. Shannon Olsson

The Environment, Geography, and Earth Sciences Department is honored to welcome Dr. Shannon Olsson to serve as the Spring 2025 Rydell Professor. During the spring term Dr. Olsson will meet with students online and on campus and will facilitate the opportunity for Gustavus students to meet virtual with leaders of the Echo Network living in India.

Dr. Olsson has traveled across four countries and three continents to inspire collective science and technology-based actions that sustain our planet. She is an international leader who brings her unique approach of merging her science background with non-science communities in multiple countries and sectors.

With more than 20 years of experience as a chemical ecologist, Dr. Olsson is a science consultant, sustainability identity advisor, and international speaker who helps organizations, companies, institutes, and governments across the globe to implement emphatic science into their climate action and sustainability planning efforts.

Dr. Olsson is a Ph.D graduate from Cornell University, a project leader at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, and then a faculty member of the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in India.

Currently, Shannon is the Founder and Global Director of the echo network. She also serves through the echo network’s international hub as Special Scientific Envoy to India with the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences (ATV) in close collaboration with the Danish Innovation Center in India (under auspices of MFA and MHER).

 
The Rydell Professorship at Gustavus Adolphus College is a scholar-in-residence program designed to bring Nobel laureates and similarly distinguished scholars to the campus as catalysts to enhance learning and teaching. The Rydell Professorship was established in 1993 by Drs. Robert E. and Susan T. Rydell to give students the opportunity to learn from and interact with leading scholars.