Scientific Advisory Board

Luc Vincent

Google

Dr. Luc Vincent is a director of engineering at Google, where he leads a number of Google Maps-related projects, including Google Street View. Prior to his work at Google, Dr. Vincent was chief scientist and then vice president of document imaging at LizardTech, Inc., a developer of advanced image compression software, where he was responsible for all aspects of the company's document imaging product line. Earlier in his career, Dr. Vincent led an R&D team at the prestigious Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Additionally, he was director of software development at Scansoft, Inc. (now Nuance Communications, Inc.) and held various technical management positions at Xerox Corporation.

Beverly Law

Professor, Change Forest Science in the College of Forestry & Adjunct Associate Professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University

Dr. Beverly Law's research focuses on the role of forests, woodlands and shrublands in the global carbon cycle. Her approach is interdisciplinary, involving in situ and remote sensing observations, and the use of models to study the effects of climate and climate-related disturbances (wildfire), as well as land-use change and management that influence carbon and water cycling across a region, whether over seasons or decades. As part of this research, Dr. Law studies the underlying biogeochemical processes and trace gas exchanges between these ecosystems and the atmosphere. She is also an expert in instrumentation and methodology for Eddy Covariance / Flux research, a key tool for carbon and water cycle studies.

Dr. Law has published dozens of peer-reviewed research articles, as well as numerous conference presentations and posters. She currently serves as the chair of the Global Terrestrial Observing System – Terrestrial Carbon Observations (supported by UNEP, UNESCO, WMO), and on the Science/Technology Committee of the Oregon Global Warming Commission. Until recently, she served ten years as the Science Chair of the AmeriFlux network of about 100 research sites, and six years on the Science Steering Groups of the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program and the North American Carbon Program. She served on the National Research Council committee on Verifying Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Methods to Support International Climate Agreements, and the committee on Air Quality Management in the U.S. She is the lead investigator on measurement and modeling programs to understand variation in terrestrial carbon sources and sinks in response to climate and disturbances from wildfires and management.

Bruce Vaughn

Co-Founder and Current Manager of the Stable Isotope Lab at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR)

INSTAAR, which is affiliated with the University of Colorado, is devoted to studying biogeochemical processes that control environmental change on human timescales, and works to develop new, automated techniques for measuring environmental stable isotopes. Prior to INSTAAR, Bruce was with the Water Resources Division of the USGS, Project Office Glaciology. He holds a M.Sc. in geological sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and has authored over 20 papers, primarily on paleoclimate research, glacier hydrology, and isotopic methods.

In addition, Bruce is an affiliate with the NOAA Carbon Cycle Green House Gas group at the Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Boulder, as well as the WMO/IAEA CO2 Experts group on Carbon Dioxide Concentration and Related Tracer Measurement Techniques. He is currently an Executive Committee member for Biogeosphere Atmosphere, Stable Isotope Network (BASIN), a field leader for West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide Deep Ice Core Project and an INSTAAR Directorate member. He has also been a member of the Ice Core Working Group NSF Advisory Committee, and served on the technical oversight committee for the development of the NSF Deep Ice Core drill. He has also completed 8 polar field seasons in Greenland and Antarctica and has performed extensive work in equatorial Pacific, Alaska, Ecuador, Cascades and Rocky Mountains.

Richard N. Zare

Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science and Chair of the Chemistry Department, Stanford University

Professor Zare began his career as an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965, but moved to the University of Colorado in 1966 where he held joint appointments in the departments of chemistry, and physics and astrophysics. In 1969 he was appointed to a full professorship in the chemistry department at Columbia University, becoming the Higgins Professor of Natural Science in 1975. In 1977 he moved to Stanford University. He was named Chair of the Department of Chemistry at Stanford University in 2005.

Professor Zare is renowned for his research in the area of laser chemistry, resulting in a greater understanding of chemical reactions at the molecular level. Through experimental and theoretical studies he has made seminal contributions to the knowledge of molecular collision processes and has contributed very significantly to solving a variety of problems in chemical analysis. His development of laser-induced fluorescence as a method for studying reaction dynamics has been widely adopted in other laboratories.

Professor Zare has received numerous honors and awards for his accomplishments in chemical science and several awards for excellence in teaching. He holds honorary degrees from ten universities around the world and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the California Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Non-Resident Fellow of the Joint Institute of Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), a Foreign Member of the Royal Society, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Swedish Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences.

Professor Zare served as the chair of the President's National Medal of Science Selection Committee from 1997-2000, chaired the National Research Council's Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications from 1992-1995, and was chair of the National Science Board during the last two years of his six years of service. He currently acts as Chairman of the Board of Directors at Annual Reviews, Inc.

Professor Zare has authored and co-authored over 700 publications and more than 50 patents, and he has published four books. He is a graduate of Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in chemical physics in 1964.

Steven C. Wofsy

Abbott Lawrence Rotch Professor of Atmospheric and Environmental Chemistry at Harvard University, Division of Engineering and Applied Science and Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Professor Wofsy is considered among the world's leaders in measurement of greenhouse gas dynamics and of carbon emissions and cycling at local, regional and global levels. He is one of the pioneers of in-flight measurement of greenhouse gases and has also performed dozens of terrestrial research projects aimed at better modeling how greenhouse gases are emitted and cycle through the biosphere. His work has focused on changes in the composition of the stratosphere and troposphere, at first in theory and modeling and later in field and laboratory studies.

His current research emphasizes the effects of terrestrial ecosystems on the global carbon cycle, aircraft measurements of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the impacts of climate change and land use on ecosystems and atmospheric composition. Several projects focus on quantitative measurements of ecosystem carbon fluxes, for time scales spanning instantaneous to decadal and spatial scales from meters to thousands of kilometers, by combining physical, chemical and biological methods. Other research interests include undertaking theoretical and modeling studies to understand depletion of stratospheric ozone in polar regions, in order to assess future impacts of pollutants injected into the stratosphere, and to examine ecological and historical factors affecting atmospheric concentrations of CO₂.

In 2001, Dr. Wofsy received the Distinguished Public Service Medal from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His other awards include AGU's Macelwane prize and NASA's Distinguished Public Service Medal. He studied chemical physics at University of Chicago (B.S., 1966) and Harvard (Ph.D. 1971), shifting his focus to atmospheric chemistry in 1971.