Rosina M. Bierbaum has been the dean of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment since 2001 and was named to the United States President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology by President Obama in 2009.
Bierbaum held a variety of positions in the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), culminating in her confirmation by the US Senate as OSTP Associate Director for Environment in 1998 and her service as acting Director of OSTP in 2001. She served as the Clinton Administration’s senior scientific adviser on environmental research and development, with responsibilities for scientific input and guidance on a range of national and international environmental issues, such as global change, air and water quality, biodiversity and ecosystem management. Closely working with President Clinton’s National Science and Technology Council, Bierbaum co-chaired the council’s Committee on Environmental and Neutral Resources as well as leading the US government reviews of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change second and third assessment reports in 1995 and 2000; the US delegations to the IPCC Plenary in Shanghai in 2001; Montreal 1999, and Costa Rica 1998. She also headed the US Delegation for the US/China bilateral on Climate Science in 2000.
She is the author of Changing By Degrees: Steps to Reduce Greenhouse Gases (Office of Technology Assessment, 1991), the two-volume study Preparing for an Uncertain Climate (OTA, 1993) as well as the co-author of numerous other works. Bierbaum is a trustee of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research as well as a board member for the Federation of American Scientists, The Energy Foundation, the Gordon E. and Betty I. Moore Foundation and the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. She also serves as the US Scientific Expert, Permanent Court of Arbitration of Disputes Relating to Natural Resources and/or the Environment.
