Virginia Burkett is Chief Scientist for Global Change Research at the U.S. Geological Survey. She was formerly Chief of the Forest Ecology Branch at the National Wetlands Research Center and Associate Regional Chief Biologist for the USGS Central Region. Burkett has served as Secretary/Director of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Director of the Louisiana Coastal Zone Management Program, and Assistant Director of the Louisiana Geological Survey. She has published extensively on the topics of global change and low-lying coastal zones. She was a Lead Author of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) T hird and Fourth Assessment Reports (2001 and 2007) and the forthcoming IPCC Technical Paper on Water. She coordinated both the Coastal and Southeast synthesis chapters of the U.S. National Assessment of climate change and its impacts (2001) and she is presently working on an updated national synthesis report for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. She has co-authored reports for The Wildlife Society (2004), the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (2005), the Everglades Task Force (2007), and the U.S. Department of Transportation (2008) that address climate change impacts and potential adaptation strategies. Burkett has been appointed to over 40 Commissions, Committees, Science Panels and Boards during her career and was among the several hundred IPCC authors who shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. She is an editor of the international journal Ethics in Science and Environmental Policy.