Biography

Chris Field is the founding Director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and Faculty Director of Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. 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).

Field’s research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale. He has, for two decades, led major experiments on responses of California grassland to multi-factor global change. He has been deeply involved with national and international scale efforts to advance science and assessment related to global ecology and climate change. 

He is a recipient of a Heinz Award and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Ecological Society of America.

Field received his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1981 and has been at the Carnegie Institution since 1984.