Manishka De Mel Editor

Cynthia Rosenzweig is a leader in the field of climate change impacts. She is an adjunct senior research scientist at Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems Research and a Professor in the Department of Environmental Science at Barnard College. She is also a senior research scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where she heads the Climate Impacts Group. She is the co-founder of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP), a major international collaboration to improve global agricultural modeling, understand climate impacts on the agricultural sector, and enhance adaptation capacity in developing and developed countries. She is now spearheading the AgMIP coordinated global and regional assessments of effects of climate change on the food system, including effects on nutrition. She was a coordinating lead author of the food security chapter for the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land. She was named as one of Nature's "Ten People Who Mattered in 2012". A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she joins impact models with climate models to project future outcomes under altered climate conditions. Martin Parry is Visiting Professor at The Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London. Until September 2008 he was Co-Chair of Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability), of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) based at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, UK. Meteorological Office. Previously he was Director of the Jackson Environment Institute (JEI), and Professor of Environmental Science at the University of East Anglia, England, UK (1999–2002); Director of the JEI and Professor of Environmental Management at University College London, England, UK (1994–99), foundation Director of the Environmental Change Institute and Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford, England, UK (1991–94), and Professor of Geography at the University of Birmingham, England, UK (1989–91). Manishka De Mel has a background in climate change, biodiversity conservation and environmental management. She has 15 years of professional experience, gained across some 20 countries worldwide. She is a Senior Staff Associate at the Center for Climate Systems Research (CCSR) at Columbia University's Earth Institute, based at NASA GISS in New York. She leads the CCSR Climate Impacts Group portfolio of Conservation and Development sector projects, collaborating with a range of partners, including World Wildlife Fund, United Nations Development Programme and Wildlife Conservation Society. She was a Lead Author on the UN Environment Programme's 2020 Adaptation Gap Report's focal chapter on nature-based solutions. In 2007 she received a UNESCO MAB Young Scientist Award. Prior to her work at CCSR, she worked at the Sri Lanka country office of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Environmental Foundation in Sri Lanka. Manishka has an MA in Climate and Society from Columbia University and an MSc in Biodiversity and Conservation and Management from the University of Oxford, England, UK. Alongside her work at CCSR, in 2018, she completed a Certificate in Business Excellence from Columbia Business School, New York, USA.