Invasive species and global climate change

Lewis Ziska is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. After graduating from the University of California, Davis, he began his career as a Smithsonian fellow, and then took up residence as the Project Leader for global climate change at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines before a 24-year career at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service. He has worked primarily on documenting the impact of climate change and rising carbon dioxide levels on: crop selection for CO2 responsiveness to improve production; climate and agronomic pests, including chemical management; and climate, plant biology and public health impacts on food security with a focus on nutrition and pesticide use. Dr. Ziska is a contributor to the 2014 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (Food Security Chapter, https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-Chap7_FINAL.pdf) and to the AR6 report (due June 2022). He is also a contributor to the 2014 and 2018 National Climate Assessment (NCA) (Public Health Chapter and Air Quality chapters, respectively) and The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment. His most recent book is Agriculture, Climate Change and Food Security in the 21st Century: Our Daily Bread (Cambridge Scholars Publishing).

Jeff Dukes directs the Purdue Climate Change Research Center and is a professor in Purdue's Departments of Forestry & Natural Resources and Biological Sciences. He holds the Belcher Chair for Environmental Sustainability in the College of Agriculture. Dr. Dukes's research examines how plants and ecosystems respond to a changing environment, focusing on topics from invasive species to climate change. Much of his experimental work seeks to inform and improve climate models. Dr. Dukes received a Ph.D from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree from Brown University, both in Biological Sciences. He has been elected a Fellow and named a Public Engagement Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America. As the director of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center, he has led the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment, and he is a contributor to the IPCC AR6 report.