Wolfram Barfuss

Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Science Leipzig



I‘m interested in the link between intelligence and sustainability.
The Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris climate agreement set the global goals for prosperous development for people and our planet. Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments.
In my work I apply concepts and tools from artificial intelligence to develop a better understanding of the global, interconnected social-ecological system.

  • Reinforcement and social Learning
  • Bounded and ecological Rationality
  • Sequential decisions under uncertianty, risk and over time
  • Cooperation, Coordination and Competition

2015-2019
Ph.D. Theoretical Physics, HU Berlin & Potsdam Insitute for Climate Impact Research

2014-2015
M.Sc. Physics, FAU Erlangen-Nueremberg

2010-2013
B.Sc. Physics, FAU Erlangen-Nueremberg

See Google Scholar for a full list

Barfuss, W, Donges, JF, Kurths, J (2019), Deterministic limit of temporal difference reinforcement learning for stochastic games, Physical Review E 99, 043305, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.99.043305

Barfuss W, Donges JF, Lade SJ, Kurths J (2018), When optimization for governing human-environment tipping elements is neither sustainable nor safe, Nature Communications 9, 2354, doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-04738-z.

Donges JF, Barfuss W, (2017), From math to metaphors and back again. Social-ecological resilience from a multi-agent-environment perspective, GAIA 26(S1), 182–190 (2017), doi: 10.14512/gaia.26.S1.5,

  • Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft
  • Princeton-Humboldt Cooperation and Collective Cognition Network
  • Princeton-Stockholm Resilience Centre-Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Resilience Network