About Us

Max Auffhammer  University of California, Berkeley
Max is an associate professor in agricultural and resource economics at UC Berkeley. He is an applied econometrician working on the economic impacts of climate change on the agriculture and energy sectors of the economy. He is also keenly interested in how emissions forecasts are constructed and evaluated. He holds a B.S. and M.S. from UMass Amherst and a Ph.D. in Economics from UC San Diego (2003).






Marshall Burke Stanford University
Marshall is an assistant professor in Stanford's Environmental Earth Systems Science Department, and a Fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment.  He studies the impacts of climate on a range of social outcomes, including agricultural productivity, disease, and conflict.  He also conducts fieldwork on the microeconomics of development in Africa.  He holds a PhD in agricultural and resource economics from UC Berkeley. 





Jen Burney UC San Diego
Jen is an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego, in the School of Global Policy & Strategy (GPS). Her research focuses on climate impacts and adaptation, mechanisms for decarbonization, and the role that air pollutants play in the climate and food systems. At one point in time she identified as a physicist (PhD 2007, Stanford) but two postdocs in food security and aerosol-climate groups turned her into something more like an environmental scientist. [Editor's note:  she is also a National Geographic Explorer]





Solomon Hsiang - University of California, Berkeley
Solomon is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.  Hsiang studies the social impacts of climate, with a focus on economic development and political economy.  Hsiang received a B.S. in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science from MIT (2006), a B.S. in Urban Studies and Planning from MIT (2006), a PhD in Sustainable Development from Columbia University (2011) and did a post-doc at Princeton University and the NBER.





David Lobell - Stanford University
David is an Associate Professor at Stanford University in Environmental Earth System Science, and a Center Fellow in Stanford's Program on Food Security and the Environment. His research focuses on identifying opportunities to raise crop yields in major agricultural regions, with an emphasis on adaptation to climate change. His current projects span Africa, South Asia, Mexico, and the United States, and involve a range of tools including remote sensing, GIS, and crop and climate models.





Michael Roberts - University of Hawaii
Michael is a professor of economics at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.  Before that he worked for USDA’s Economic Research Service.  His research focuses on the intersection of agricultural and environmental economics, and he has published papers on the effects of US agricultural policies on production, land use, and the size of farms.  Since leaving USDA, his research has focused increasingly on the potential effects of climate change on production of staple food grains and how biofuel growth has contributed to rising world food prices and food price variability.




Wolfram Schlenker - Columbia University
Wolfram teaches classes in environmental and natural resource economics. His research interests include the economics of climate change, water rights, and their impact on agricultural output, as well as models of exhaustible resources with endogenous discoveries.  He holds a PhD in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Berkeley (2003) and a Master of engineering and management sciences from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany (2000), as well as a Master of environmental management from Duke University (1998).