Judith Sissener
Executive Director
Judith Sissener
Executive Director
Elizabeth Muller
Director of Strategy
Elizabeth Muller
Director of Strategy
Elizabeth is the co-founder and Executive Director of Berkeley Earth. She has led the organization from the founding to the original land-temperature data collection and analysis, to analysis on mitigation of global warming, and the more recent addition of global air pollution data collection and analysis. Elizabeth is also the co-founder and CEO of Deep Isolation, which is addressing the unsolved nuclear waste problem through innovative technology and a new approach to stakeholder engagement. Previously, she was Director at Gov3 (now CS Transform) and Executive Director of the Gov3 Foundation. From 2000 to 2005 she was a policy advisor at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Elizabeth has advised governments in over 30 countries, in both the developed and developing world. She has extensive experience with stakeholder engagement and communications, especially with regard to technical issues. She developed numerous techniques for bringing government and private actors together to build consensus and implement action plans, and has a proven ability to deliver sustainable change. She has also designed and implemented projects for public sector clients, helping them to build new policies and strategies for government reform and modernization, collaboration across government ministries and agencies, and strategies for the information society.
Richard Muller
Co-founder and Board Director
Richard Muller
Co-founder and Board Director
Richard Muller is Professor of Physics emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, co-founder and scientific director at Berkeley Earth, and co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Deep Isolation Inc., a company that proposes disposal of nuclear waste in deep horizontal drillholes.
Rich has been awarded the Breakthrough Prize (for the discovery of Dark Energy), MacArthur Prize Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Alan T. Waterman Award (for cosmic microwave anisotropy, atmospheric correction for astronomy, and for the invention of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry), the Texas Instruments Foundation Founders Prize, the Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Donald Sterling Noyce Prize. His class was voted best course on the Berkeley campus in all fields. He was named by Newsweek as one of top 25 innovators in the US in 1989. In 2011 he was cited by Atlantic Magazine as one of 21 Brave Thinkers, based on his work for Berkeley Earth. Foreign Policy Magazine cited him in 2012 as a top Global Thinker. Poder Business Magazine gave him a 2012 Courage Award. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the California Academy of Sciences. He is the author of over 120 scientific articles and ten books, including Physics for Future Presidents, Energy for Future Presidents, and Now, the Physics of Time.
While Rich is best known for his work in astrophysics and geophysics, he also spent over a decade researching paleoclimate. His primary interest was in the Milankovitch cycles, and is the author of a technical book “Ice Ages and Astronomical Causes” (co-author: the late Gordon MacDonald), published by Springer, which emphasizes methods of mathematical climate analysis. He published a series of papers on the subject in Nature, Science, Geology, Paleoceanography and elsewhere, and was a referee for the National Academy of Sciences on IPCC work.
He has over three decades of high level advising to the US Government (Dept. of Energy, NASA, Dept. of Defense, others) on science and technology issues relating to energy and national security.
He has been married to Rosemary Muller for over 50 years, and has two daughters, Elizabeth and Melinda. He refers to Elizabeth, who is the CEO of both Berkeley Earth and Deep Isolation, as “my boss.”
Robert Rohde
Lead Scientist
Robert Rohde
Lead Scientist
Robert obtained his Ph.D. in experimental/theoretical physics in January 2010 from UC Berkeley. His expertise focuses on the statistical analysis of large data sets, including experience dealing with data biases and errors that typically accompany diverse data collections. He led the development of the Berkeley Earth temperature analysis, which has used more than a billion instrumental temperature observations to reconstruct the historical climate of the Earth. By bringing in more data and applying modern statistical techniques, Berkeley Earth was able to provide a longer and more detailed history of climate change. This analysis is now widely cited and used in the scientific discussion of global warming.
Robert has also worked with Berkeley Earth to develop real-time and historical analyses of air quality for many regions of the Earth. This work has helped to quantify the impact of air pollution on human health.
Prior to Berkeley Earth, Robert is the co-author (with Richard Muller) of a series of papers on the analysis of biodiversity in the fossil record. He was also the author (with P. Buford Price) of papers working to understand several aspects of ice cores and role of microbial life in glacial ice. His Ph.D. thesis was on The Development and Use of the Berkeley Fluorescence Spectrometer to Characterize Microbial Content and Detect Volcanic Ash in Glacial Ice.
For decades, Robert has spent part of his time as a scientific communicator and producer of scientific visualizations. His graphics and insights have frequently appeared in mass media such as the Washington Post, New York Times, Wikipedia, and other venues.
Zeke Hausfather
Scientist
Zeke Hausfather
Scientist
Zeke Hausfather is a climate scientist and energy systems analyst whose research focuses on observational temperature records, climate models, and mitigation technologies. He spent 10 years working as a data scientist and entrepreneur in the cleantech sector, where he was the lead data scientist at Essess, the chief scientist at C3.ai, and the cofounder and chief scientist of Efficiency 2.0. He was previously the senior climate analyst at Project Drawdown, and currently is the Director of Climate and Energy at the Breakthrough Institute and the US analyst for Carbon Brief as well as serving as a research scientist with Berkeley Earth. He has masters degrees in environmental science from Yale University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a PhD in climate science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Marie Mosimann
Executive Assistant
Marie Mosimann
Executive Assistant
Marie Mosimann has over 10 years of experience supporting various small businesses in the Bay Area as a Project Manager and Executive Assistant. Resourceful and creative, she has a knack for simplifying processes and increasing efficiency in small businesses.
Kari Hulac
Social Media Manager
Kari Hulac
Social Media Manager
Kari is a veteran daily news reporter and editor with a passion for telling compelling stories that help people better understand the world and improve their lives. She’s spent the past 10 years of her career focused on social media, blogging and communications and marketing projects, guiding growth at several startup companies and for a global solar manufacturer. She’s an avid outdoorswoman who spends as much time as possible hiking the hills around the San Francisco Bay Area or swimming in the Pacific Ocean.
