Director of Science, IPCC Working Group II Technical Support Unit
Profile Website

Katharine is Director of Science for the IPCC Working Group II Technical Support Unit. Her work supports the scientific activities of IPCC Working Group II, which has included Expert Meetings and Workshops, the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (2012), and the Working Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report (2014). She was a member of the core writing team for the IPCC Synthesis Report for the Fifth Assessment (2014). Her research has involved marine biomechanics and ecophysiology, ecological consequences of wave-induced breakage in seaweeds, and impacts of climate change for ocean ecosystems. Current research interests include methods of assessment and treatment of uncertainties and risk in climate change assessments and decisionmaking. Mach received her PhD from Stanford University in 2010 and has been with the IPCC since 2010.

Chris Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, and Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University. Field’s research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale, integrating field, laboratory, and modeling approaches. Field has been deeply involved with national and international scale efforts to advance science and assessment related to global ecology and climate change. He is co-chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which led the effort on the IPCC Special Report on “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation” (2012) and Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014). He is a recipient of the Heinz Award, the Max Plank Research Award, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and the Roger Revelle Medal. Field was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences (2001), and fellowships in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2010), the Ecological Society of America (2012), and the American Geophysical Union (2014). Field received his PhD from Stanford in 1981 and has been at the Carnegie Institution for Science since 1984.