Governance

Foundation Member Biographies

Prof. Cutler Cleveland

Boston University, Director, Center for Energy and Environmental Studies and Chairman,
Environmental Information Coalition

Cutler Cleveland is currently the Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University, where he also holds the position of Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment. Dr. Cleveland is Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Energy (Elsevier Science, 2004), winner of an American Library Association award, and Editor-in-Chief of the Dictionary of Energy (Elsevier Science, 2005) and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Ecological Economics.

Cutler holds a B.S. in Ecology and Systematics from Cornell University, a M.S. in Marine Science from Louisiana State University, and a Ph. D. in Geography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Cleveland is a member of the American Statistical Association's Committee on Energy Statistics, an advisory group to the Department of Energy, and a participant in the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum. He has been a consultant to numerous private and public organizations, including the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, Charles River Associates, the Technical Research Centre of Finland, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the MacArthur Foundation have supported his research. Dr. Cleveland's research focuses on the ecological-economic analysis of how energy and materials are used to meet human needs. His research employs the use of econometric models of oil supply, natural resource scarcity, and the relation between the use of energy and natural resources and economic systems.

Cutler publishes in journals such as Nature, Science, Ecological Modeling, Energy, The Energy Journal, The Annual Review of Energy, Resource and Energy Economics, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, the Canadian Journal of Forest Research, and Ecological Economics. He has won publication awards from the International Association of Energy Economics, the American Library Association, and the National Wildlife Federation.

Robert Corell, Ph. D.

Senior Policy Fellow with the Policy Program of the American Meteorological Society

Robert is also currently a Senior Research Fellow in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

His current policy interests include: research concerned with both the sciences of global change and sustainability, in particular the interface between science and public policy, as well as developing an international initiative in sustainability science that seeks to integrate at the science-policy interface scientific and technological research, assessments, monitoring/observations, and decision support systems. In addition, he currently serves as the Chair of the Steering Committee for the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, an international effort to evaluate the effects of climate variability, change, and UV increases in the Arctic.

Prior to coming to the AMS in January 2000, Corell was Assistant Director for Geosciences at the National Science Foundation, where he had oversight of the Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences and the global change programs of the NSF. While at the NSF, he also served as the Chair of the committee of the National Science and Technology that has oversight of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. He has also served as Chair and principal U.S. delegate to many international bodies with interests in, and responsibilities for, climate and global change at...

A native of Detroit, Corell is an oceanographer and engineer by background and training, having received Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. degrees at the Case Institute of Technology and MIT. He has also held appointments at the Woods Hole Institution of Oceanography, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the University of Washington.

Corell is an AMS Fellow. He has received an AMS Special Award and the AGU's Edward A. Flinn III Award.

Joseph Firmage

CEO and founder of ManyOne Networks, and chairman and founder of the Digital Universe Foundation

Joseph is a visionary at the cusp of 21st century science and technology and responsible for companies that were pioneers in both object oriented programming tools and the commercial adoption of the World Wide Web, Joseph brings a lifetime of passion for science and more than a decade of business experience.

Joseph was Founder and CEO of Serius Corporation, Vice President of strategy for Novell's Network Systems Group, co-founder, and Chairman and CEO of USWeb Corporation, which, under his leadership, became the world's largest Internet consulting firm, serving half of the Fortune 100, and a publicly traded company with thousands of employees in North America and Europe, with a market capitalization of $3 billion. Joseph left USWeb in late 1998 to focus his life on public education, physics, and other philanthropic priorities.

Since 1999, Mr. Firmage has also been sponsoring advanced physics research from both theoretical and experimental perspectives with the intention of developing technologies for nonpolluting energy generation and breakthrough land, sea, air, and space transportation systems.

He is a founding sponsor of the Carl Sagan Foundation, whose present mission is to transform the sterile environment of children's hospitals into Cosmic Discovery Centers, where the healing facilities' walls, walkways, ceilings, and rooms create an immersive experience of the wonders of the Universe.

Joseph is a member of the Board of Directors of Cosmos Studios. He is the founding sponsor of the Integral Institute, founded, organized and led by world-renowned evolutionary consciousness scholar Ken Wilber. He regularly sponsors conferences and discussions on issues of 21st century life, including economics, environmental action, science, spirituality, and future studies in general.

Bernard Haisch, Ph. D.

President of the Digital Universe Foundation

Bernard is an astrophysicist and has authored or co-authored over 130 scientific publications and has been a principal investigator on numerous NASA research projects. He served for ten years as a scientific editor for the "Astrophysical Journal" and has been on the editorial board of "Solar Physics" and "Speculations in Science and Technology." For twelve years, he acted as Editor-in-Chief of the "Journal of Scientific Exploration." He has been a visiting fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute fuer Extraterrestrische Physik in Garching, Germany; a visiting scientist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands; and Deputy Director of the Center for EUV Astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. He co-chaired two major conferences of the International Astronomical Union: "Solar and Stellar Flares" at Stanford University in 1988 and "Astrophysics in the Extreme Ultraviolet" at the University of California, Berkeley in 1995.

Bernard received his doctorate in astronomy from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and completed three years of postdoctoral research at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics at the University of Colorado. He spent 20 years as a staff scientist at the Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory and the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory. From 1999 to 2002 he led a team of five postdoctoral physicists studying problems in fundamental physics related to the quantum vacuum at the privately-funded California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Palo Alto, California. His biography appears in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Science and Engineering, and American Men and Women of Science.

Lawrence Lessig, Ph. D.

Founder and Chairman of the Creative Commons Project

Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a Professor at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

Professor Lessig represented web site operator Eric Eldred in the ground-breaking case Eldred v. Ashcroft, a challenge to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. He has won numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation's Freedom Award, and was named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries, for arguing "against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online."

Professor Lessig is the author of Free Culture (2004), The Future of Ideas (2001) and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999). He chairs the Creative Commons project, and serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge.

Professor Lessig earned a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.

Professor Lessig teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, contracts, and the law of cyberspace.

Joakim Lindblom, Ph. D.

ManyOne Networks, Vice President, Platform Development & Strategy

Joakim Lindblom joined The ManyOne Network in 2002, and is responsible for the development of ManyOne's Stewardship program. The ManyOne Stewardship program engages experts from institutions of research and higher learning, scientific and professional organizations, and media sources to produce and maintain high-caliber content for the ManyOne service.

From 1999 - 2002, Joakim was a Technology and Business Consultant for Nokia Networks, where he helped assess emerging technologies and introduced new R&D management practices to Nokia's global R&D effort. From 1992 to 1999, Joakim consulted for several companies and research institutions in diverse roles that melded scientific/technical R&D, business development, and international business practices.

From 1990 to 1992, Joakim was Chief Project Scientist for the $30 million Ultra-High Resolution Spectroheliogragh (UHRXS) Space Station Project and the first generation MSSTA sounding rocket observatory, both NASA projects based at Stanford University.

Joakim received his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the Applied Physics Department at Stanford University in June 1990, and his B.S. in Physics with honors from the California Institute of Technology.

Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold is an internationally syndicated author of best-sellers Virtual Reality and The Virtual Community, editor of best-seller The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog, and the founding Executive Editor of HotWired, the pioneering online publication launched on the World Wide Web by Wired magazine. Howard has been involved with or founded many Internet enterprises and has been a participant-observer in the design of new technologies; a pioneer, critic and forecaster of technology's impacts; and a speaker who involves his audience in an adventure in group futurism.

Lawrence Sanger, Ph. D.

Director of Distributed Content Programs

Larry Sanger is Director of Distributed Content Programs for the Digital Universe Foundation and is actively involved in the design of various programs, and especially the encyclopedia program, associated with the Digital Universe. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2000 from Ohio State, with a specialization in Epistemology. He was the chief organizer of Wikipedia in its first year and played a key role in its creation.

Peter Saundry, Ph. D.

National Council for Science and the Environment

Peter Saundry is the Executive Director of the National Council for Science and the Environment, a nonpartisan organization of scientists, environmentalists, business people, and policy makers working to improve the scientific basis of environmental decision making. He has served as Executive Director since 1993. Dr. Saundry provides day-to-day leadership to the organization and responsible for overall program, financial and staff management, strategic planning, and development.

Peter is an experienced builder of coalitions of diverse individuals and organizations to apply science to shared objectives ranging from sustainable forestry to public education.

Peter is also Treasurer of Global Children's Health and Environment Fund (GCHEF), a non-profit international organization based in Washington, DC. In 1995, he was elected to the World Academy of Art and Science.

From 1991 - 92, Peter was a Congressional Science Fellow with the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, where he was a key advisor on science and technology issues related to the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautic and Space Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency. From 1989 to 1991 Dr. Saundry chaired the Sierra Club Clean Coastal Waters Task Force in Los Angeles, CA, and was a member of the Management Committee for the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project, a part of EPA's National Estuaries Program.

Peter received a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Southern California in 1991, an M.S. in Physics from Adelphi University in 1984, and a B.S. in Physics, with honors, from Southampton University, U.K., in 1982.

Prof. Yervant Terzian

"The David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences", Department of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Cornell University

Yervant's fields of expertise are the physics of the Interstellar Medium, Galaxies, and Radio Astronomy. He is a Research Professor with the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center and member of the International Astronomical Union, the International Union of Radio Science, the American Astronomical Society, and the Hellenic Astronomical Society, among other memberships. He has been a Scientific Editor of The Astrophysical Journal (1989-1999). In 1984, he received the Clark Distinguished Award for Excellence in Teaching.

In 1996, he was appointed Director of NASA's New York Space Grant Program to enhance science education. He has been awarded Honorary Doctor of Science degrees from the University of Indiana (1989), the Yerevan State University in Armenia (1994), the University of Thessaloniki in Greece (1997), and from Union College (1999). In 1990, he was elected Foreign Member of the Armenian Academy of Sciences. In 2001 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2002 he was elected Chairman of the US Consortium of Universities and Institutes to construct the Square Kilometer Array giant radio telescope. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 scientific publications and the editor of six books, including "Carl Sagan's Universe."