In her function as Chairperson of the Board of Trustees, Oda Keppler, Ministerial Director at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, has officially appointed Prof. Lars Bernard to the Scientific Advisory Council of the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) as of 1 January 2023. His term of office is four years. The members of the GFZ Scientific Advisory Board in turn advise the Board of Trustees and the GFZ Executive Board in all areas of research and development. Proposals for appointments to the Advisory Board are made by the GFZ bodies, including the Board of Trustees, Directorate, the Internal Scientific Council and the current members of the Scientific Advisory Council themselves. Proposals can include domestic and foreign personalities from science, industry and public institutions who have proven expertise in GFZ research topics.

The newly appointed member of the Scientific Advisory Council, Lars Bernard, is a professor of geoinformatics, holds a doctorate in geoinformatics and a degree in geography. Since 2007, Lars Bernard has held a professorship GIS in the Department of Geosciences at Dresden University of Technology. In 2015, he was appointed a W3 professorship in Geoinformatics in the same department of the university.

In research and teaching, Lars Bernard represents geoinformatics across all departments at TU Dresden with a focus on geoinformation systems (GIS), geodata infrastructure and geoinformatics services for spatiotemporal simulation. He is also the university's Chief Digitalisation and Information Management Officer and a member of the extended Rectorate. Furthermore, he has taken on functions in a number of national and international committees, for example Lars Bernhard is the spokesperson for the 'National Research Data Infrastructure for Earth System Sciences' (NFDI4Earth).