Four new members join the Academy's Board of Trustees

SAN FRANCISCO (December 17, 2018)—The Chair of the Board of Trustees of the California Academy of Sciences, Elizabeth “Liebe” Patterson, is pleased to announce that four new members have been elected to the Academy's Board of Trustees. These new members join the Board as the Academy celebrates the tenth anniversary of its groundbreaking new home in Golden Gate Park. Designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano, the new facility has welcomed nearly 15 million visitors in the last decade. The only place in the world to house an aquarium, planetarium, and natural history museum under one living roof, the Academy is also home to world-class scientific research, sustainability, and environmental education programs that support the institution’s mission to explore, explain, and sustain life on Earth.

The Academy is also pleased to announce the election of Dr. Charles Marshall as its new President and Dr. Tessa M. Hill as Vice President. A leading paleobiologist and Academy Science Fellow, Marshall is the Philip Sandford Boone Chair in Paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also Director of the University of California, Museum of Paleontology and co-Director of the Berkeley Initiative in Global Change Biology. Marshall, who previously served as Vice President of the Academy's board, succeeds Dr. Harold A. Mooney, the Paul S. Achilles Professor of Environmental Biology, Emeritus at Stanford University, in this important scientific leadership position. Hill is a leading marine scientist and Professor and Chancellor’s Fellow at University of California, Davis in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences. She is also resident at UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, a research station on the Northern California Coast. The new Board members are:

ELIZABETH H. BLACKBURN, PHD is a Nobel Laureate and a pioneering molecular biologist. She was on the faculty of UC Berkeley from 1978 to 1990, when she moved to University of California, San Francisco. She is currently professor emerita in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF. Blackburn won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009 for discovering the molecular nature of telomeres, the ends of chromosomes that serve as protective caps essential for preserving genetic information, and for co-discovering telomerase, an enzyme that maintains telomere ends. Both telomeres and telomerase are thought to play central roles in aging and diseases such as cancer, and her work helped launch entire new fields of research in these areas. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Blackburn has received nearly every major award in science including the Lasker, Gruber, and Gairdner prizes. She was named to the TIME 100 in 2007, the magazine’s yearly list of the most influential people in the world. She is a member of numerous prestigious scientific societies including the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the Royal Society of London. She has served as president of both the American Association of Cancer Research and the American Society for Cell Biology, and has served on the editorial boards of several scientific journals including the influential journals Cell and Science. Helping to guide public science policy, she was a member of the Stem Cell Research Advisory Panel for the California State Legislature and a member of the President’s Council of Bioethics, an advisory committee to the President of the United States.

CHRISTOPHER FIELD, PHD is the Faculty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, a Professor of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford, a Professor in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences at Stanford, and a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy. Prior to his appointment as Director of the Woods Institute in September 2016, Field served as Director of the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology, which he founded in 2002. His tenure at the Carnegie Institution dates back to 1984. Field’s research focus is on climate change, ranging from work on improving climate models to prospects for renewable energy systems. He has been deeply involved with national and international scale efforts to advance science and assessment related to global ecology and climate change, including service as Co-Chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 2008 to 2015 and current membership on the Board of Directors of the World Wildlife Fund. Additionally, Field is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Ecological Society of America. Field received an AB in Biology from Harvard University in 1975 and a PhD in Biology from Stanford University in 1981. He is also a current member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University.

JEFFREY KOSEFF, PHD is the William Alden and Martha Campbell Professor of Engineering at Stanford University and Senior Fellow and founding co-director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. He is an expert in the interdisciplinary domain of environmental fluid mechanics and focuses on the interaction between physical and biological systems in natural aquatic environments. Activities include turbulence and internal wave dynamics in stratified flows, sea-grass canopy hydrodynamics, the interaction between gravity currents and breaking internal waves, and the transport of marine microplastics. Long-term research projects include understanding the transport of mass and momentum in estuarine systems such as San Francisco Bay, and understanding how water flow affects the coral reef systems of the Great Barrier Reef, the Red Sea, and Hawaii. Koseff has served on the Board of Governors of the Israel Institute of Technology and the visiting committees of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Cornell, Carnegie Mellon University, the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research, and the MIT-WHOI Joint Program. He is also a former member of the Independent Science Board of the California Bay-Delta Authority. Koseff received a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa) in 1976, an MS in Civil Engineering from Stanford University in 1978, and a PhD in Civil Engineering from Stanford in 1983. He is married to Dr. Thalia Anagnos, Professor of Engineering and Associate Vice President of Graduate and Undergraduate Programs at San Jose State University.

JANET LAMKIN is the United Airlines President for California, which is home to United’s San Francisco and Los Angeles hubs. In this role, Lamkin leads United’s drive to best serve customers in the state. She focuses on ensuring United remains the leading airline for California customers, while also working closely with local airport authorities to develop short- and long-term strategies to benefit United customers. Prior to this role, Lamkin served as California state president for Bank of America. She was responsible for growing the business and strategically positioning the bank in California, including developing and maintaining relationships and initiatives with a broad range of stakeholders in the corporate, government, philanthropic, and grassroots sectors. She spent 20 years with Bank of America in California, serving in a variety of management positions. Lamkin recently concluded a two-year term as Chair of the Bay Area Council, where she was the first woman to hold that post. She has been named one of the 100 Most Influential Businesswomen in the Bay Area by San Francisco Business Times for eight consecutive years. She sits on the board of several non-profit organizations, including the German Marshall Fund, SFMOMA, the UCSF Health Executive Council. Lamkin is also on the national advisory council of the Boys and Girls Club.