FACT Alliance Executive Committee
Lewis H. Ziska
- FACT Alliance Executive Committee Member
- Associate Professor of Environmental Health Sciences
- Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Lew Ziska, PhD, is currently an associate professor in 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, later becoming the project leader for global climate change at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Ziska then moved to the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service where he served for 24 years. He has worked primarily on documenting the impacts 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.
Ziska was a contributor to the 1995, 2001, 2007, 2014, and 2022 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. He was also a contributor to the 2014 and 2018 National Climate Assessment (NCA) on the Public Health and Air Quality chapters respectively, and he helped lead the 2016 special NCA report on climate and health, The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment. Ziska's most recent book, Greenhouse Planet: How Rising CO2 changes Plants—and Life as We Know It, was published in June 2022 through Columbia University Press.