Biography
Dr. Rosina Bierbaum is Professor and Dean Emerita of the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability (formerly the School of Natural Resources and Environment), with appointments in the School of Public Health and other interdisciplinary programs. She serves as the Chair of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF); STAP provides strategic advice on GEF projects that will both protect the global commons and advance the goals of the Rio environmental treaties. Dr. Bierbaum served as Dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment from October 2001 – October 2011. In that decade, she facilitated the creation of a new undergraduate Program in the Environment; enhanced interdisciplinary teaching and research by recruiting thirty-two new faculty to the School, developed new Master’s tracks to link engineering, architecture and urban planning, and natural resources; tripled research activity; and expanded the mission of the School to include global change. Dr. Bierbaum chaired the Adaptation Chapter for the Congressionally mandated U.S. National Climate Assessment, published in 2014. She was the lead author of the assessment and widely recognized for her work on climate adaptation. She also co-directed the World Bank’s World Development Report 2010, which for the first time focused on climate change and development. This report has served as the foundation for subsequent Bank-wide strategies on energy and the environment, as well as for the development of a public climate data portal. Dr. Bierbaum was the Acting Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in January 2001, and prior to that, she directed the first Environment Division at OSTP from 1995-2001. She served as the administration’s senior scientific advisor on the $2 billion environmental research and development strategy, with responsibilities for global change, air and water quality, biodiversity, ecosystem management, environmental monitoring, and energy research and development. Dr. Bierbaum’s career in Washington began in 1980 when she was awarded a Congressional Fellowship. She then continued working in the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), helping various Congressional Committees address emerging scientific and policy concerns posed by acid rain, marine pollution, urban smog, ozone depletion, energy production and climate change. She participated in 9 book length reports and testified many times before Congress.
In addition to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Dr. Bierbaum is also a board member for the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Federation of American Scientists, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, and the Climate Reality Project. She is also a member of the International Advisory Board for the journal “Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment” and the Executive Committee for the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. Dr. Bierbaum serves on environmental Advisory Panels for both the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainability Investment. Dr. Bierbaum was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2019 in recognition of her distinguished contributions to environmental science and policy.
She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Ecological Society of America, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a member of the American Philosophical Society. She also received the American Geophysical Union’s Waldo Smith award for extraordinary service to Geosciences, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Climate Protection Award.”
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