Stephen E. Zebiak
Director General, The International Research Institute for Climate and Society
Dr. Zebiak is director general of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, which uses a science-based approach to enhance society's ability to understand, anticipate and manage climate risk to improve human welfare. As director, he leads an inter-disciplinary team of over 40 scientists specializing in climate prediction, agriculture, health, water, economics and development policy. Dr. Zebiak has worked in the area of ocean-atmosphere interaction and climate variability since completing his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. He and Dr. Mark Cane authored the first dynamical model used to predict El Niño successfully. He has published extensively in journals such as Science, Nature, the International Journal of Climatology, and has served as an advisor to a range of U.S. and international climate science research programs.
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