Robert W. Corell

Robert Corell is the Director of the Global Change Program at The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment and is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Policy Program of the American Meteorological Society, and he recently completed an appointment as a Senior Research Fellow in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University which began in January 2000. He is currently actively engaged in research concerned with both the science of global change and the interface between science and public policy. He is particularly interested in global and regional climate change and related environmental issues, and in the science to facilitate understanding of vulnerability and sustainable development.

Dr. Corell is the co-chairman of an international strategic planning group that is developing the strategy for and the programs and activities that are designed to harness science, technology and innovation for sustainable development. This planning effort is sponsored by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), and a major international initiative, supported in part from a grant from the Packard Foundation entitled “An International Initiative for Science Technology, and Innovation for Sustainability (ISTS).” He is the leader of an international partnership intended to better understand and plan for a transition to hydrogen for several nations, entitled the “Global Hydrogen Partnership,” currently focused on Iceland, India, and the eight Arctic nations seeking to address this important new energy strategy and economic policy.

Dr. Corell is leading a research project to explore methods, models, and conceptual frameworks for vulnerability research, analysis, and assessment. The current focus of which is on vulnerabilities of indigenous communities in the Arctic. Further, he currently serves as the Chair of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment; an international assessment of the impacts of climate variability, change, and UV increases in the Arctic Region, and the Chair of an international planning R&D effort for the Arctic region and with a time scale of a decade or two ahead. He is also the Senior Science Advisor to ManyOne Networks, a Silicon Valley team designing the next generation of Internet Web Browser, the initial focus on planet earth and Chair of the Board of the Digital Universe Foundation.

Prior to January 2000, Dr. Corell was Assistant Director for Geosciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF) where he had oversight for the Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences and the global change programs of the NSF. While at the NSF, Dr. Corell also served as the Chair of the National Science and Technology Council’s committee that has oversight of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and was Chair of the international committee of government agencies funding global change research. Further, he served as Chair and principal U.S. delegate to many international bodies with interests in and responsibilities for climate and global change research programs.

Prior to joining the NSF, Dr. Corell was a Professor and academic administrator at the University of New Hampshire. Dr. Corell is an oceanographer and engineer by background and training, having received the Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. degrees at the Case Western Reserve University and MIT and has held appointments at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the University of Washington, and Case Western Reserve University.