Jen Burney

Jennifer (Jen) Burney is a Professor in Global Environmental Policy and Earth System Science in the Doerr School of Sustainability. Her research focuses on the coupled relationships between climate and food security – measuring air pollutant emissions and concentrations, quantifying the effects of climate and air pollution on land use and food systems, understanding how food production and consumption contribute to climate change, and designing and evaluating technologies and strategies for adaptation and mitigation among the world’s farmers. Her research group combines methods from physics, ecology, statistics, remote sensing, economics, and policy to understand critical scientific uncertainties in this coupled system and to provide evidence for what will – or won’t – work to simultaneously end hunger and stabilize earth’s climate. She earned a PhD in physics in 2007, completed postdoctoral fellowships in both food security and climate science, and was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2011; prior to joining the Doerr School, she served on the faculty at UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.