also serves as co-editor-in-chief of the journal Climatic Change. Background Oppenheimer was born February 28, 1946, in New York City. He received an S.B. in Chemistry from MIT, a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Chicago, and pursued post-doctoral research at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. He joined the Princeton faculty after more than two decades with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a non-governmental, environmental organization, where he served as chief scientist and manager of the Climate and Air Program. Prior to his position at the Environmental Defense Fund, Dr. Oppenheimer served as Atomic and Molecular Astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian and Lecturer on Astronomy at Harvard University. He continues to serve as a science advisor to EDF. Oppenheimer won the 2010 Heinz Award in the Environment and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Research interests His interests include science and policy of the atmosphere, particularly climate change and its impacts. Much of his research aims to understand the potential for "dangerous" outcomes of increasing levels of greenhouse gases by exploring the effects of global warming on ice sheets and sea level, and on patterns of human migration. He has assessed linkages among climate change, crop yields and Mexico–US cross-border migration. Oppenheimer studies the process of scientific learning and scientific assessments and their role in influencing public policies to respond to global change. Role in global science policy Oppenheimer is a long-time participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, serving recently as a Coordinating Lead Author of the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. In the late 1980s, Dr. Oppenheimer and a handful of other scientists organized two workshops under the auspices of the United Nations that helped precipitate the negotiations that resulted in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (signed at the 1992 Earth Summit) and the Kyoto Protocol. During that period, he co-founded the Climate Action Network. His research and advocacy work on acid rain also contributed to the passage of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act and influenced the development of the Kyoto Protocol. Assessment of the IPCC process In 2007, he wrote about limitations of the IPCC consensus approach in Science Magazine. The current centralized assessment role of the IPCC allows for "communication