Featured Leonardo Members

We are pleased to present our featured members:

Dr. Stephen H. Schneider is the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, Professor of Biology, and a Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. He served as an NCAR scientist from 1973-1996, where he co-founded the Climate Project. He focuses on climate change science, integrated assessment of ecological and economic impacts of human-induced climate change, and identifying viable climate policies and technological solutions. He has consulted for federal agencies and White House staff in seven administrations. Involved with the IPCC since 1988, he was Coordinating Lead Author, WG II, Chapter 19, "Assessing Key Vulnerabilities and the Risk from Climate Change" and a core writer for the Fourth Assessment Synthesis Report. He along with four generations of IPCC authors received a collective Nobel Peace Prize for their joint efforts in 2007. Elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2002, Dr. Schneider received the American Association for the Advancement of Science/ Westinghouse Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology and a MacArthur Fellowship for integrating and interpreting the results of global climate research. Founder/ editor of Climatic Change, he has authored or co-authored over 500 books, scientific papers, proceedings, legislative testimonies, edited books and chapters, reviews and editorials including his most recently released books: Climate Change Science and Policy and Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save the Earth’s Climate. Dr. Schneider counsels policy makers, corporate executives, and non-profit stakeholders about using risk management strategies in climate-policy decision-making, given the uncertainties in future projections of global climate change and related impacts. He is actively engaged in improving public understanding of science and the environment through extensive media communication and public outreach.

Gail Wight investigates issues of biology and the history of science and technology. Her work engages the cultural impact of scientific practice, and plays with our constant redefinition of self through our epistemologies. Historical frameworks express themselves in concepts about the nature of existence as well as upon the tools that emerge out of scientific research. As an artist, Wight traces the ways in which those tools carry their ideologies with them, moving from the scientific to the social sphere and impacting the art-making process. Recent projects often involve other living organisms, inviting them to become co-authors in the finished work of art. Wight holds an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute where she was a Javits Fellow, and a BFA from the Studio for Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art. Wight has exhibited her work internationally, including venues such as the Natural History Museum of London, Ars Electronica (Austria), Exit Art (New York), the Physics Room (New Zealand), Cornerhouse, Manchester, and Patricia Sweetow Gallery in San Francisco. She has worked for a research project on cognition at MIT, in the Exploratorium’s Performance Program, and has held residencies at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy, at Capp Street Project, the Exploratorium, the Albuquerque High Performance Computing Center, and at Stonehenge and the Salisbury Museum, UK.

Andrea Polli is a digital media artist living in New Mexico. Her work addresses issues related to science and technology in contemporary society. She is interested in global systems, the real time interconnectivity of these systems, and the effect of these systems on individuals. Polli's work with science, technology and media has been presented widely in over 100 presentations, exhibitions and performances internationally, has been recognized by numerous grants, residencies and awards including UNESCO. Her work has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, Art News, NY Arts and others. She has published two book chapters, several audio CDs, DVDs and many papers in print including MIT Press and Cambridge University Press journals. She currently works in collaboration with atmospheric scientists to develop systems for understanding storm and climate through sound (called sonification). Recent projects include: a spatialized sonification of highly detailed models of storms that devastated the New York area; a series of sonifications of climate in Central Park; and a real-time multi-channel sonification and visualization of weather in the Arctic. She has exhibited, performed, and lectured nationally and internationally and recently spent seven weeks in Antarctica on a National Science Foundation funded project. http://www.90degreessouth.org. As a member of the steering committee for New York 2050, a wide-reaching project envisioning the future of the New York City region, she worked with city planners, environmental scientists, historians and other experts to look at the impact of climate on the future of human life both locally and globally.

Karen Holl is a Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She received her B.S. in Biology from Stanford University, completed her Ph.D. in Biology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and did a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. Her research focuses on understanding how local and landscape scale processes affect ecosystem recovery from human disturbance and using this information to restore damaged ecosystems. She has studied restoration ecology in a range of ecosystems, including tropical rain forests, eastern hardwood forests, and chaparral, grassland and riparian systems in California. She is increasingly interested in the feedbacks between climate change and restoration. She advises numerous public and private agencies on land management and restoration. At UCSC she co-directs the Center for Tropical, Research on Ecology, Agriculture, and Development and works to further efforts to conserve tropical forest, in part by training students from Latin American countries. In 2008 she was selected as an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow and is committed to communicating with policy makers and the public. She teaches courses in restoration ecology, conservation biology, and environmental problem solving, and chairs the Environmental Studies Department Curriculum Committee. She is on the editorial board for Restoration Ecology and is the associated editor for the Island Press-Society for Ecological Restoration book series.

Marisa Jahn is an artist/writer/curator/activist who co-founded REV- (www.rev-it.org), a non-profit organization that fosters socially-engaged art, design, and pedagogy. Her work has been presented at the MIT Museum; ICA Philadelphia; ISEA/Zero One; Eyebeam; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Asian Art Museum, etc. Jahn received a BA from UC Berkeley (2000), a MS from MIT’s Department of Architecture (2008), and has received awards and recognition from Franklin Furnace, UNESCO, CEC Artslink. In 2009 she was an artist-in-residence at MIT’s Media Lab, an artist teacher with Center for Urban Pedagogy, and curator-in-residence at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. Jahn is the co-editor of ‘Where We Are Now’ (www.wherewearenow.org), an online journal and forum focused on art and politics in New York City. She also is the editor of two books. A meditation on the anticipatory and improvisatorial nature of recipes, ‘Recipes for an Encounter’ (published by Western Front, 2009 with co-editors Berin Golonu and Candice Hopkins) draws examples from diagrams, schematics, lists, and propositions from the fields of art, architecture, and ethnography. ‘Byproduct: On the Excess of Embedded Art Practices’ (YYZ Books, 2010) is a book that investigates artistic practices that embed themselves within other non-artworld institutions and engage their contexts to itself produce the work. Jahn works with various grassroots advocacy organizations such as I-Witness Video, NYC Park Advocates, and Street Vendor Project, she is the current Director of Architecture at Art Omi (artomi.org). Jahn’s work has been featured in international media including Art in America, LA Times, Frieze, Punk Planet, San Francisco Chronicle, Make Magazine, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, NPR, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Updated 26 May 2010