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James N. Galloway, University of Virginia

James N. Galloway is the Sidman P. Poole Professor of Environmental Sciences, and the Associate Dean of Science in the College of Arts and Sciences, at the University of Virginia. He served as President of the Bermuda Biological Station for Research (now Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences) from 1988 to 1995, and as chair of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia from 1996 to 2001. He has been a member of the USA EPA Science Advisory Board since 2003, and served as the founding chair of the International Nitrogen Initiative from 2003 to 2008.

In 2002 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and was awarded, with Harold Mooney, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. His research on biogeochemistry includes the natural and anthropogenic controls on chemical cycles at the watershed, regional and global scales.

His current research focuses on beneficial and detrimental effects of reactive nitrogen as it cascades between the atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystems and freshwater and marine ecosystems.

Cheryl A. Palm, Columbia University

Cheryl A. Palm is a Senior Research Scientist in the Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment Program of the Earth Institute at Columbia University where she is also the Science Director of the Millennium Villages Project. She is currently the chair of the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI) and was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomists in 2005. A tropical ecologist focusing on land use change and nutrient dynamics, Dr. Palm served as Principal Research Scientist of the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Program in Nairobi, Kenya from 1991-2001.

Dr. Palm’s research focuses on land use change, degradation and rehabilitation, and ecosystem services in tropical landscapes. She led a major effort quantifying carbon stocks, losses and net greenhouse gas emissions following slash and burn and alternative land use systems in the humid tropics in the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon, Indonesia and the Congo Basin. She has spent much of the past 15 years investigating nutrient dynamics in farming systems of Africa, including options for land rehabilitation.

Her most recent work includes the Millennium Villages Project, an integrated approach to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals in rural sub-Saharan Africa.

Phil Robertson, Michigan State University

Phil Robertson is Professor of Ecosystem Science in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Michigan State University and a resident faculty at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station. His research interests include the biogeochemistry and ecology of field crop ecosystems, including biofuel systems.

Since 1988 he has directed the NSF Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program in Agricultural Ecology at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station. He has served on many NSF, USDA, and NRC panels and committees both as a member and as a chair and has testified before the U.S. Senate Agriculture, Forestry, and Nutrition Committee.

Currently, he is chair of the U.S. LTER Network's Science Council and Executive Board and a program leader in the Department of Energy's Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center. He is a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America and in 2005 he received Michigan State University’s Distinguished Faculty award.

Alan Townsend, University of Colorado at Boulder

Alan Townsend is an ecologist and professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Alan co-directed CUBoulder’s Carbon, Climate and Society Initiative, has authored a newspaper column on global environmental change, and has served on many national and international bodies, including the SCOPE Nitrogen Program, the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI), the Ecological Society of America’s (ESA) Visions Committee, and the Science Advisory Board for the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

He is currently the Associate Director of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, Director of the INI’s North American Nitrogen Center, and serves on ESA’s Rapid Response Team, a group that provides environmental information to policy-makers at both state and national levels.

He and his lab group study how terrestrial ecosystems respond to and affect several aspects of human-induced environmental change, including a recent emphasis on the links between a rapidly changing nitrogen cycle and human health and welfare. This spring, he led the Paris meeting of the INI that designed the initial stages of the global nitrogen assessment.