John Paul Holdren

Dr. Holdren served as Science Advisor to President Obama, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology from January 2009 until January 2017.  From 1996 to 2009 he was the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government and Professor of Environmental Science and Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, positions to which he was re-appointed in February 2017. Shortly thereafter he was named Affiliated Professor in Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science. In 2021 he transitioned to Teresa and John Heinz Professor in the Kennedy School and Emeritus status in Earth and Planetary Sciences and the Paulson School. In parallel with his Harvard positions, he served from 2005 through 2008 as President of the independent, nonprofit Woods Hole Research Center. From 1973 to 1996 he was assistant, associate, and full professor of energy and resources at the University of California, where he co-founded and co-led the campus-wide, inter-disciplinary graduate-degree program in energy and resources (the Energy and Resources Group).  His own degrees are in aerospace engineering and theoretical plasma physics from MIT and Stanford.  He served in 1970 and 1971 in the theory group of the Magnetic Fusion Energy Division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and in 1972 and 1973 as a Senior Research Fellow in the Environmental Quality Laboratory and the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at Caltech.  In addition to American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, as well as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London and the Indian National Academy of Engineering.