Chris Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University, and Faculty Director of Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. Field’s research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale. He has, for nearly two decades, led major experiments on responses of California grassland to multi-factor global change. Field has served on many national and international committees related to global ecology and climate change. He was a coordinating lead author for the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a member of the IPCC delegation that received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. In September, 2008, he was elected co-chair of working group 2 of the IPCC, and will lead the next assessment on climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Field received his PhD from Stanford in 1981 and has been at the Carnegie Institution for Science since 1984.