Michael Oppenheimer

Michael Oppenheimer is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University. He is also the current Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP) at the Woodrow Wilson School and Faculty Associate of the Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences Program, Princeton Environmental Institute, and the Center of International Studies. He joined the Princeton faculty after more than two decades with Environmental Defense, a non-governmental, environmental organization, where he served as its Chief Scientist and Manager of the Global and Regional Atmosphere Program. His interests include science and policy of the atmosphere, particularly climate change and its impacts. His research explores the potential effects of global warming, including the effects of warming on atmospheric chemistry; on ecosystems and the nitrogen cycle; on ocean circulation; and on the ice sheets in the context of defining “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the climate system. Alternative approaches to decision-making on problems of global change and the role of precautionary frameworks inform his investigations.

In the late 1980's, Dr. Oppenheimer and a handful of other scientists organized two workshops under the auspices of the United Nations that helped precipitate the negotiations that resulted in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (signed at the 1992 Earth Summit) and the Kyoto Protocol. He is also a co-founder of the Climate Action Network.

Prior to his position at Environmental Defense, Dr. Oppenheimer served as Atomic and Molecular Astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Lecturer on Astronomy at Harvard University. He received an S.B. in chemistry from M.I.T., a Ph.D. in chemical physics from the University of Chicago, and pursued post-doctoral research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Recently, he has served as a lead author of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He is also a lead author on the Fourth Assessment Report. He served on the National Research Council's Panel on the Atmospheric Effects of Aviation and on several university and institutional advisory boards.

Dr. Oppenheimer is the author of more than 70 articles published in professional journals and is co-author (with Robert H. Boyle) of a 1990 book, Dead Heat: The Race Against The Greenhouse Effect.