Professor Ronald G. Prinn

Director, MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change

Professor Prinn, Director of the Joint Program and the Director of the Center for Global Change Science, works extensively with social scientists to link the science, economics and policy aspects of global change. He co-led the development of the MIT Integrated Global System Modeling framework, which is central to this effort. This unique modeling framework couples economics, climate physics and chemistry, and land and ocean ecosystems to estimate uncertainty in climate predictions and analyze proposed climate policies.

A faculty member at MIT since 1971, Professor Prinn is the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Science and headed the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences from 1998 to 2003. Along with his work in linking the science, economics and policy aspects of global change, his research incorporates the chemistry, dynamics and physics of the atmospheres of the Earth and other planets, and the chemical evolution of atmospheres.

Professor Prinn has made significant contributions to the development of national and international scientific research programs in global change. He leads the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE), which for the past three decades has measured the rates of change of the concentrations of the trace gases involved in the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion. Through this work he is pioneering the use of inverse methods, which use such measurements and three-dimensional models to determine trace-gas emissions and understand atmospheric chemical processes, especially those processes involving the oxidation capacity of the atmosphere.

Professor Prinn has testified twice to the U.S. Congress on climate change science and its implications for policy, and was a lead author in the Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published in 2007. His work is published in more than 200 articles, reports and volume chapters, and he has served in a variety of leadership capacities and committees.

Learn more about Professor Ronald Prinn.

We thank Dr. John Reilly for his many years of service as Co-Director of the Joint Program. He stepped down from this role on August 31, 2020.

Learn more about Dr. John Reilly.

Other Leadership

C. Adam Schlosser, Deputy Director

Sergey Paltsev, Deputy Director

Anne Slinn, Executive Director for Research