Brief Biography - Dr. Roberta Balstad

Roberta Balstad served as CIESIN's director at Columbia until spring 2006. She then became a senior fellow with CIESIN, continuing her research activities as co-PI with ADVANCE and the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED). She is chair of the U.S. National Committee for CODATA (the ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology) and a member of the ICSU Committee on Scientific Planning and Review. She also chairs the St. Antony's College Trust (Oxford University) in North America.

Before joining CIESIN, Roberta directed the Division of Social and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation. She was the founder and first Executive Director of the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA), which mobilized a successful campaign to overturn massive cuts to the social sciences proposed by the Reagan administration in 1981. She has published extensively on science policy, information technology and scientific research, remote sensing applications and policy, and the role of the social sciences in understanding global environmental change. Roberta received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Minnesota.