Conference Speakers

Chris Andrews is the Chief of Public Engagement and Director of the Steinhart Aquarium. Before joining the Academy in 2005, he was the Executive Director of the South Carolina Aquarium (Charleston, SC). He has also served as the Senior Director of Husbandry and Operations at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, and as the Curator of the Aquarium, Reptile House and Invertebrate house at the London Zoo. He has a BS in Applied Zoology from Leeds University (UK), and his Ph.D. is in fish diseases from Liverpool University (UK). At the Academy his primary responsibility is exhibit development and public floor programming for the Steinhart Aquarium, the Kimball Natural History Museum and the Morrison Planetarium, with an emphasis on person-to-person interactions and innovative exhibits to enhance the guest experience and further the Academy’s conservation mission.

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Jeremy Babendure, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Pharmacy at UC San Diego. He directs the UCSD BioBridge teacher professional development program currently operating in partnering districts, a program geared toward linking the science and education communities. Dr. Babendure also serves as Educational Outreach Director for the San Diego Science Festival 2010 where his primary role is to direct all of the Festival's school-related programs, guide collaborative educational opportunities, and support year-round events related to the San Diego Science Festival and National Science Festival Network. He leads efforts in programs such as Nifty Fifty, Scientist in Residence, and building relationships between science professionals, educators, and administrators in the Festival network. Jeremy holds a PhD in biomedical sciences and biotechnology from UC San Diego. He is a Flinn Scholar and a member of the Arizona BioIndustry Association. Dr. Babendure is also principal author and PI/co-PI on numerous grants in partner districts (e.g., GK-12, ITEST, Department of Education FIPSE, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Pre-College Science Education). Dr. Babendure studied under recent Nobel laureate Roger Tsien, designing molecular sensors for RNA.

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Tim Barnett is a research marine geophysicist in the Climate Research Division of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on the physics of climate change and long-range climate forecasting. A native of California, Barnett attended Pomona College in Claremont, CA and received a B.A. in physics and mathematics. He received his Ph.D. in oceanography from Scripps in 1966. Barnett investigates global atmospheric and oceanic conditions and uses computer models to understand global climate fluctuations such as climate prediction (including El Niño forecasting), the effects of land processes on climate change, and the recognition of greenhouse gas signals (such as sea-level rise). He also specializes in the detection of anthropogenic signals associated with global warming. In early 2008, he and colleague David Pierce were lead authors on two analyses of water supplies in the western United States that gained widespread media attention. One used air temperature, river runoff, and snowpack data to determine that human-caused climate change is already creating a decline in Western water supplies. The second forecast that Lake Mead, a major source of water in the Southwest, could go dry by 2021 in the face of global warming and increasing public demand for water. He also has worked as an oceanographic consultant for Marine Advisers, Inc. in La Jolla, CA, and as an oceanographer for the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office in Washington, DC.

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Julie Benyo is Director of Educational Outreach for WGBH and oversees the development and implementation of education initiatives and editorial resources targeting preK through college educators and youth, and informal venues such as libraries, museums, and youth-serving organizations around the country. The department has extensive experience creating innovative educational initiatives and robust partnerships to accompany such projects as NOVA, Between the Lions, Design Squad, Masterpiece, Arthur, and many others. All projects rely on strong working relationships with local public television stations and other educational groups to inform their development and to effectively localize implementation. Julie received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. and Ph.D. from SUNY Albany. Before coming to WGBH in 1996, she was involved in both informal and formal education at a number of institutions, including Boston’s Museum of Science, Loyola University in Chicago, Harvard University, and the University of Connecticut.

Tom Bowman is one of the premier interpreters of global change, climate and energy science, and green business strategies. He is a social entrepreneur, advisor, communication strategist, and science interpreter. As President of Bowman Design Group, he led award-winning climate change exhibition designs for the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences and Birch Aquarium at Scripps, the Ocean on the Edge exhibition at the Aquarium of the Pacific, and energy efficiency exhibitions for electric utility companies across the country. As a consultant with Bowman Global Change, he contributed to the federal Climate Literacy education guide and organized a groundbreaking meeting to assess public attitudes about global warming and authored its influential summary report. Bowman founded the Climate Solutions Project to develop public intervention strategies with a blueribbon team of experts in climate science, social science, economics, ethics, and social marketing. He writes a monthly column on green business strategies and received an inaugural Small Business of the Year award from the California Air Resources Board in 2009 for generating an annual cost savings while slashing his firm’s greenhouse gas emissions by 65% in just two years.

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Louise Bradshaw, Director of Education at Saint Louis Zoo, is responsible for all activities of the Zoo’s Education Department.  These functions include education programs and services for teachers, adults, youth, school groups, scout groups and families; the Zoo’s  Interpretation unit including traveling exhibits; the Teacher Resource Center and Zoo Library; the Zoo Travel Program and the  Zoo’s 280 Docents, or volunteer teachers. Saint Louis Zoo educational programs and services reach over 2 million people annually. Her areas of interest include developing teacher training programs in partnership with conservation field projects in Kenya and Nicaragua, effective approaches to audience research at zoos and aquariums and models for increasing scientific and environmental literacy. Louise has been an employee of the Saint Louis Zoo since 1984.

Louise is currently a member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Research and Technology Committee, has served as a member advisor to the AZA Conservation Education Committee, as education liaison to the Meso-American Caribbean Conservation Action Partnership and is past chair of the Regional Program Committee of the AZA.  She served for ten years as an instructor and course administrator for the AZA sponsored Conservation Education Training Course for Zoo educators. Louise holds a B.S in Biology from Saint Louis University and a MSEd. in Education from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Louise is also volunteers with several community organizations and local schools and focuses on school governance, science education, environmental advocacy and education and sustainable management of natural areas.

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Kenneth Caldeira is a senior climate scientist in the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Department of Global Ecology. His innovative work illuminates the connections between climate, the carbon cycle, and our energy system. An influential voice on present and future ocean acidification, and the prospects of “geoengineering” solutions to global warming, Caldeira has contributed to reports for the Nobel-Prize-winning and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has testified before the U.S. Congress and the British Parliament on climate-related issues. His research has been reported widely in newspapers and magazines and on television. In 2008, New Scientist magazine named him one of eight “Science Heroes” of the year, and he is number 36 among 100 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “Agents of Change” — “artists and leaders, policymakers, writers, thinkers, scientists and provocateurs who are fighting every day to show us what is possible.” He is a 2010 Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), which honors scientists who “have attained acknowledged eminence in the Earth and space sciences.”

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Leah Melani Christian is a research associate at the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in Washington, D.C. where her work focuses on public opinion, with a particular interest in environmental policy. She has written several reports on people’s attitudes about global warming, energy policies and the environment. She also has a strong interest in survey methodology and is co-author of the book, Internet, Mail and Mixed-Mode Surveys: The Tailored Design Method (3rd ed) and has published several research articles in a variety of journals, including Public Opinion Quarterly. Her current methodological research focuses on the various challenges surveyors face when conducting dual frame landline and cell phone surveys.

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Tinsley Davis is the Executive Director of the National Association of Science Writers, an organization devoted to the accurate dissemination of scientific information and professional development for its almost 2,500 members. Formerly, she worked in the Gordon Current Science & Technology Center at the Museum of Science, Boston where she was a key member of a team developing innovative ways for science centers to bring current research to the public. While earning her M.S. in Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Davis collaborated with education researchers as a National Science Foundation K-Through-Infinity fellow, and was awarded the American Association for the Advancement of Science Mass Media fellowship to write for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Elected to membership in Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society as an undergraduate at Swarthmore College, Davis revels in urban gardening, horseback riding, and outdoor pursuits.

Simon Donner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia whose research focuses on climate change and aquatic ecosystems. Donner and his students use field measurements and computer modeling to evaluate how past climate experience affects the resilience of ecosystems like coral reefs to climate change. This research helps develop effective strategies for adaptation and mitigation. His ongoing projects include coral reef resilience in the central equatorial Pacific; developing global tools for predicting coral bleaching; climate change adaptation strategies for south and central Pacific Islands; and the effect of climate variability on nitrogen and phosphorus pollution to coastal waters. Donner is an associate in the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of British Columbia, and the Institute of the Environment at the University of Minnesota. He is also a 2009 Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow. He joined UBC in 2008 after several years working as a research scientist at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and working on a variety of overseas reef-related projects. He has a B.Arts.Sci. from McMaster University, a M.E.M. in Water and Air Resources from Duke University, and a Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from the University of Wisconsin. To learn more, visit the climate science and policy blog Maribo.

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Sharon Dunwoody is Evjue-Bascom Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as Associate Dean for Social Studies in the Graduate School. Among other affiliations, she is a member of the Governance Faculty of the university’s Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and is a faculty affiliate of the Science and Technology Studies program. As a scholar, she focuses on the construction of media science messages and on how those messages are employed by individuals for various cognitive and behavioral purposes. Dunwoody has served as a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Brazil, as a visiting journalism fellow at Deakin University in Australia, and most recently as Donnier Guest Professor at Stockholm University. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research and a Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis. She is former head of the section on General Interest in Science and Technology of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and former president of both the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. She currently serves on the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science and Technology of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A former science writer, she earned the BA in journalism at Indiana University in 1969, the MA in mass communication from Temple University in 1975, and the Ph.D. in mass communication from Indiana University in 1978. Before joining the UW-Madison faculty in 1981, she was on the faculty of the Ohio State University School of Journalism.

Evan Hadingham published his first book on early aviation as a teenager. He then developed a strong interest in archaeology and acquired a master’s degree in Prehistory and Archaeology from Sheffield University in England. His feature articles on the archaeology of Egypt, China, Greece, and the Americas have appeared in magazines like The Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Discover, and Reader’s Digest. His books include Lines to the Mountain Gods, Early Man and the Cosmos, Secrets of the Ice Age, and The Fighting Triplanes. In 1986, Hadingham was a Macy Fellow in Broadcast Journalism at WGBH-TV in Boston and became the Science Editor for NOVA in 1988. From 1995-1998, Hadingham was the Co-Executive Producer for the Discovery Channel’s series, Discover Magazine. Returning to NOVA in 1998 as Senior Science Editor, Hadingham resumed responsibility for the science content of all NOVA’s original documentaries and co-productions. He is involved at every step from development through final script writing. Among the shows he has produced for NOVA are Search for the First Americans, Who Killed the Red Baron? and Decoding Nazi Secrets.

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Nigella Hillgarth is executive director of Birch Aquarium at Scripps, the public exploration center of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. A  zoologist, Hillgarth came to the institution in 2002 from her position as executive director of Tracy Aviary, the nation's largest bird park, in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Hillgarth has spearheaded the creation of the dynamic Scripps Explorers Gallery, which transformed a decade-old exhibition in the Hall of Oceanography and has also expanded visitors' hands-on interaction by installing two additional touch tide pools. One- to three-year exhibits developed and installed under Hillgarth's direction include Sounds of the Sea, Earthquake: Life on a Restless Planet, Sea of Genes, Art of Deception, Wonders of Water, and the award-winning Feeling the Heat: The Climate Challenge. Hillgarth currently serves as assistant director for outreach at Scripps Oceanography, working to ensure that the institution's mission and cutting-edge discoveries are effectively communicated to the world. Born in Tipperary, Ireland, Hillgarth received her master's degree in zoology and doctoral degree in animal behavior, both from Oxford University, England. She specialized in the behavior and physiology of pheasants, carrying out research in Britain, India, and Thailand. She came to the United States in 1992 to research jungle fowl at UC Riverside. A year later, Hillgarth attended the University of Washington, where she studied hormones and behavior in birds. She made several research trips to the Arctic during this time. In 1997, she joined the University of Utah in Salt Lake City to study the interactions of hormones, health, and behavior in mice.

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Mark Hixon has been a professor in OSU's Department of Zoology since 1984. His expertise is the ecology of coastal marine fishes in both temperate and tropical regions, emphasizing undersea observations and experiments. He completed his Ph.D. at U.C. Santa Barbara, where he studied the ecology of kelp-forest fishes, and was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Hawai`i, where he began his studies of coral-reef fishes. Off Oregon, Mark has participated in long-term manned submersible studies of groundfish communities inhabiting the outer continental shelf. He has also published on projects in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, the Great Barrier Reef, and French Polynesia. His research has clarified mechanisms that naturally regulate populations and sustain biodiversity of marine fishes. In 2004, he was honored by ISI Citation Index as the most cited American author on coral reefs in the past decade. A Fulbright Senior Scholar and Aldo Leopold Leadership Program Fellow, Mark serves on the editorial boards of three scientific journals: Coral Reefs, Ecology, and Ecological Monographs. He is an executive appointee of both the Clinton and Bush administrations to the Marine Protected Areas Federal Advisory Committee, which he currently chairs. Mark has also served on the National Science Foundation Geosciences Advisory Committee as chair of the ocean science subcommittee.

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Jean Johnson is Executive Vice President of Public Agenda and head of its Education Insights division, which works to enhance public and community engagement in public education. As a member of Public Agenda’s senior staff, she has developed and managed research and communications projects on a wide variety of issues. She has authored or co-authored Public Agenda studies on education, families, religion, race relations, manners and civility, retirement, welfare, and health care. She is also co-author, with executive vice president Scott Bittle, of two books: "Who Turned Out the Lights? Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis," published in 2009; and "Where Does the Money Go? Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis," published in 2008.

Prior to joining Public Agenda in 1980, Ms. Johnson was Resource Director for Action for Children's Television in Boston, where she authored a number of articles on the effect of television on children and adolescents. In addition to her work at Public Agenda, Ms. Johnson is a director of Sugal Records, a small, New York-based classical music recording company. Ms. Johnson graduated from Mount Holyoke College, and holds master's degrees from Brown University and Simmons College.

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Julie Johnson is the Science Museum of Minnesota’s (SMM) first John Roe Chair of Museum Leadership. She helps to further the implementation of museum goals, provides support and leadership in the areas of planning, programming, personnel development and collaboration. From 2003-2005 Johnson was Program Officer at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Elementary, Secondary and Informal Education Division. Concurrent with the assignment at NSF, Johnson was the executive vice president & chief operating officer for the New Jersey State Aquarium. There she spearheaded the development of programs involving local youth and was principal investigator for the PISEC Family Science Learning Study and Families Exploring Science Together. She also oversaw the development of Drama Gills, a robust internal theatre troupe which delivered programs on-site and off-site. She serves on the board of the Visitor Studies Association and is on the faculty for the Getty Leadership Institute’s Museum Leaders: the Next Generation.

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Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is Director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives and the Yale Project on Climate Change at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is also a principal investigator at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University. He is an expert on American and international public opinion on global warming, including public perception of climate change risks, support and opposition for climate policies, and willingness to make individual behavioral change. His research investigates the psychological, cultural, political, and geographic factors that drive public environmental perception and behavior. He has conducted survey, experimental, and field research at scales ranging from the global to the local, including international studies, the United States, individual states (Alaska and Florida), municipalities (New York City), and with the Inupiaq Eskimo of Northwest Alaska. He also recently conducted the first empirical assessment of worldwide public values, attitudes, and behaviors regarding global sustainability, including environmental protection, economic growth, and human development. He has served as a consultant to the John F. Kennedy School of Government (Harvard University), the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, the Global Roundtable on Climate Change at the Earth Institute (Columbia University), and the World Economic Forum.

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Shirley Malcom is Head of the Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The directorate includes AAAS programs in education, activities for underrepresented groups, and public understanding of science and technology. Dr. Malcom serves on several boards—including the Heinz Endowments and the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment—and is an honorary trustee of the American Museum of Natural History. In 2006 she was named as co-chair (with Leon Lederman) of the National Science Board Commission on 21st Century Education in STEM. She serves as a Regent of Morgan State University and as a trustee of Caltech. In addition, she has chaired a number of national committees addressing education reform and access to scientific and technical education, careers and literacy. Dr. Malcom is a former trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. She is a fellow of the AAAS and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She served on the National Science Board, the policymaking body of the National Science Foundation, from 1994 to 1998, and from 1994-2001 served on the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology. Dr. Malcom received her doctorate in ecology from Pennsylvania State University; master's degree in zoology from the University of California, Los Angeles; and bachelor's degree with distinction in zoology from the University of Washington. She also holds 15 honorary degrees. In 2003 Dr. Malcom received the Public Welfare Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, the highest award given by the Academy.

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Victoria L. “Vicki” May is Assistant Dean of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Throughout her career, she has worked to build successful university-community-business partnerships in support of K-12 science education. Science outreach programs provide graduate courses for teachers, science materials for classrooms and enrichment programs for students. Annually, science outreach programs impact nearly 3,000 K-12 teachers and over 22,500 students. Under Vicki’s leadership, grant revenue for science outreach programs has increased from $200,000 in 1998 to over $2 million in 2007. Major projects include the $3.7 million MySci project, supported by the Monsanto Fund. Vicki has taught chemistry at the high school and college level, and has worked in a research lab at Washington University School of Medicine.

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Frank Niepold is currently a Climate Education Coordinator at NOAA's Climate Program Office in Silver Spring Maryland and a GLOBE Program Master Trainer. At NOAA, he develops and implements NOAA's Climate goal education and outreach efforts that specifically relate to NOAA's Environmental Literacy cross cutting priority. He is a co-managing author of Climate Literacy: The Essential Principles of Climate Science, a collaborative effort of NOAA, NSF, NASA, AAAS Project 2061, CIRES, the American Meteorological Society, and various members from both the science and education community to define climate literacy in the United States. He is also a co-chair of the Climate Education Interagency Working Group at the US Climate Change Science Program. As a GLOBE Trainer, he trains teachers in intensive field and laboratory settings throughout the United States and internationally. Mr. Niepold has spent seven years developing remote sensing educational materials for the Landsat Educational Outreach team. He has spent 10 years working as a Middle/High School Earth Systems Science Teacher. He received his MSEd in Earth Space Science Education (2006) from John's Hopkins University with areas of concentration in Earth Observing Systems, Scientist/Teacher/Student Collaboration, and Earth Systems science education focused on climate. He earned a BA in Human Ecology (1994) from the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, ME and B.F.A. in Photography and Video (1989) from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia.

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Matthew Nisbet, Ph.D. is a social scientist who studies strategic communication in policy-making and public affairs, focusing on controversies surrounding science, the environment, and public health. He is the author of more than two dozen journal articles and book chapters, and serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Press/Politics and Science Communication. His scholarship has been cited more than 300 times in the peer-reviewed literature and in more than 100 books. Nisbet’s current research on climate change communication is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation where he is a Health Policy Investigator. He has also worked as a consultant to the National Academies, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Science Foundation and other leading organizations. Nisbet is a frequently invited speaker at universities and meetings across North America and Europe and he has lectured on more than two dozen college campuses.

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Naomi Oreskes (Ph.D., Stanford, 1990), is Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego; Adjunct Professor of Geosciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography; and the Provost of Sixth College, UC San Diego’s newest undergraduate college, whose curriculum focuses on the theme of Culture, Art, and Technology. Her research focuses on the historical development of scientific knowledge, methods, and practices in the earth and environmental sciences. She is the author of The Rejection of Continental Drift (Oxford University Press, 1999); Merchants of Doubt, forthcoming from Bloomsbury Press in June 2010 (with Erik M. Conway), and Science on a Mission: American Oceanography in the Cold War and Beyond, to be published by the University of Chicago Press, and the co-editor of Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth (Westview Press, 2001). Oreskes is most well known for her work on the history of climate science. Her 2004 essay “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” (Science 306: 1686), led to numerous Op-Ed pieces, including in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her work has been widely cited in the mass media in the United States and Europe, including in the Royal Society’s publication, “A guide to facts and fictions about climate change," and in the Academy-award winning film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Her recent testimony to the United States Senate on the history of climate science may be accessed at http://epw.senate.gov/epwmultimedia/epw120606.ram.

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Rajul Pandya is the director of UCAR's Community Building Program, which partners with undeserved communities to design and carry out projects that advance understanding of atmospheric science and address community priorities. Current projects include working with American Indian Communities around the effects of climate change on Native lands and cultures and work in Ghana to explore how improved precipitation forecasts can be used to better manage meningitis. Pandya is also director of SOARS, an internship program to broaden participation in the atmospheric and related sciences through research, mentoring, and community.

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Jo Ellen Roseman is director of Project 2061 at AAAS and oversees its programs and activities aimed at improving education in science, mathematics, and technology for all students. Dr. Roseman joined Project 2061 with the release Science for All Americans in 1989 and has been involved in the development, testing, and dissemination of its subsequent tools, including Benchmarks for Science Literacy, Resources for Science Literacy: Professional Development, Atlas of Science Literacy and its current effort to design assessments of science literacy. She directed the Project's development and application of a valid and reliable procedure for evaluating both the content and instructional design of science and mathematics textbooks in light of national standards and continues to work with curriculum developers to help them design courses and materials that meet the content and instructional criteria. Dr. Roseman is the Principal Investigator for the Center for Curriculum Materials in Science, funded through the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Center for Learning and Teaching program and for NOAA- and NASA-funded efforts to develop classroom experiences that make use of their Earth systems data to help middle school students understand weather and climate concepts. Prior to joining Project 2061, she was involved in scientific research and teaching at Johns Hopkins University, where she directed two graduate degree programs for secondary science teachers and prospective teachers, and at the National Institutes of Health. She has extensive experience teaching biology and chemistry at high school, college, and graduate levels. Dr. Roseman received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Johns Hopkins University.

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Dennis Schatz is Senior Vice President for Strategic Programs at Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Washington. He provides leadership to several of the Science Center's major initiatives. He co-directs Washington State LASER (Leadership and Assistance for Science Education Reform), a program to implement a quality K-12 science program in all 295 school districts in Washington State. Portal to the Public is a new initiative to develop programs – both onsite and off – that engage the public in understanding the current science research being conducted across the state. He is the author of 21 science books for children that have sold almost 2 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 23 languages. He is also co-author/editor of several curriculum resources for teachers. He has received numerous honors – most recently the 2009 Faraday Science Communicator Award, given annually by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). This award recognizes and honors an individual or organization that has inspired the public’s interest in and appreciation of science. He joins an elite group of highly prestigious honorees: last year’s winner was the PBS series NOVA, and in 2007 the award was presented to NPR Science Correspondent Ira Flatow.

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Rob Semper is Executive Associate Director of the Exploratorium in San Francisco and is responsible for leading the institution’s work in developing programs for the public and educators using exhibits, workshops, media and Internet resources. Dr. Semper is the principle investigator on numerous science education, media and research projects including leading the National Science Foundation sponsored Center for Informal Learning and Schools, a research collaboration between the Exploratorium, U.C. Santa Cruz, and King’s College, London, which studies the relationship between museums and formal education and serving as Co-PI on the NSF funded Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network, a national network of science centers designed to foster engagement of the public with the nanotechnology field. Over the past fifteen years, Dr. Semper has guided the development of the award winning Exploratorium Website that has explored the role of museums in the online world including the development of online fieldtrips to locations of scientific research. Since joining the Exploratorium in 1977, he has led numerous exhibit development, teacher enhancement, and media development projects focused on science education for the public, teachers and students. Dr. Semper received his Ph.D in solid state physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1973.

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Richard Somerville is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Research Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. He is a theoretical meteorologist and an expert on climate change. He is a coordinating lead author of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (www.ipcc.ch). The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Somerville co-authored the 2009 “Copenhagen Diagnosis” (www.copenhagendiagnosis.com), which summarizes policy-relevant new research in climate change science published since the last IPCC report. Richard Somerville is also the author of an award-winning popular book, The Forgiving Air: Understanding Environmental Change (second edition, 2008). His web site (www.richardsomerville.com) has many links and downloads, including samples of his recent nontechnical articles.

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Ellen Stechel is the Manager of the Fuels and Energy Transitions Department in the Energy Futures Group at Sandia National Laboratories, where she concentrates on building research programs and capabilities in energy technologies to simultaneously reduce the nation’s dependence on fossil energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. She manages and develops programs to:

  • produce renewable liquid hydrocarbon fuels from solar or nuclear energy and recycled CO2
  • progress the development of viable fuel cell and reversible fuel cell technologies
  • advance novel hydrogen generation concepts and technologies
  • develop lower energy water purification technologies
  • create new materials for gas and other separations as well as for detection of biological or radiological activity

Her department also has the responsibility for managing the Department of Energy’s, Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Facility on the North Slope of Alaska, which plays a critical role in reducing uncertainties in climate science models. Stechel received her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Chemistry from Oberlin College and her master’s degree in Physical Chemistry and PhD in Chemical Physics from the University of Chicago.

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Martin Storksdieck is the director of the Board on Science Education at the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council where he oversees studies that address a wide range of issues related to science education and helps coordinate science education work within the Academies. Martin also serves as a research fellow at the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI) where he oversees research studies on science learning in immersive environments; models of involving researchers and scientists in science museums and science centers; and understanding the impact of science hobbyists, such as amateur astronomers, on the public understanding of science. He previously served as Director of Project Development and as senior researcher at ILI. Martin began his informal science education career as a science educator with a planetarium in Germany where he developed shows and programs on global environmental change, and as editor, host, and producer for a weekly environmental news broadcast. Before his involvement in informal education, Martin worked as an environmental consultant specializing on local environmental management systems. Martin holds a Masters in Biology from the Albert-Ludwigs University (Freiburg, Germany), a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in education from Leuphana University (Lüneburg, Germany).

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Debbie Zmarzly, Ph.D., is a Project Scientist/Exhibit Developer at the Birch Aquarium, the public exploration center for Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD. Trained as a research scientist, she received her doctorate in Oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1985. Driven by a passion to improve science literacy in the U.S., Dr. Zmarzly transitioned to a career in science education in 1993, when she joined the staff of the Birch Aquarium as Director of School and Summer Programs. Since 1997, she has served as Project Scientist/Exhibit Developer, with major responsibility for translating earth and ocean science research conducted at Scripps into highly engaging, interactive exhibits and programs for public and school audiences.

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