Thomas Dietz is Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science and Assistant Vice President for Environmental Research at Michigan State University. He holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis, and a Bachelor of General Studies from Kent State University. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has been awarded the Sustainability Science Award of the Ecological Society of America, the Distinguished Contribution Award of the American Sociological Association Section on Environment, Technology and Society, and the Outstanding Publication Award, also from the American Sociological Association Section on Environment, Technology and Society. He currently co-chairs the U.S. National Academies Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change and serves on the Committee on America’s Climate Choices. He was also chair of the National Academies Panel on Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making and the Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change. He has co-authored or co-edited 11 books and more than 100 papers and book chapters. His current research examines the human driving forces of environmental change, environmental values and the interplay between science and democracy in environmental issues. He is an active participant in the Ecological and Cultural Change Studies Group at MSU.

Gerald T. Gardner is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. He taught in and helped direct UM-D’s Environmental Studies Program, and taught at U. of M., Ann Arbor. His main area of specialization is the application of behavioral science knowledge to the understanding and solution of global and regional environmental problems. He received a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and was a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Mathematical Psychology Program at Rockefeller University in New York. He was a Visiting Research Scholar for 2 1/2 years at Yale University’s Program on Energy and Behavior, Institution for Social and Policy Studies.

Jonathan Gilligan is Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Vanderbilt University. He is Associate Director for Research of the Vanderbilt Climate Change Research Network and coordinator of the Transdisciplinary Initiative on Environmental Systems, and was a fellow of Vanderbilt’s Center for the Study of Religion and Culture. His research and teaching interests focus on the use of scientific knowledge in public policy, particularly where scientific uncertainty, intergenerational equity, and tensions between technocracy and democracy are important. He received a Ph.D. in Physics from Yale University and was a National Research Council postdoctoral associate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. In 1993-94, he was a research associate at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where he led the ACATS-IV airborne gas chromatograph team on NASA’s ASHOE/MAESA project to study stratospheric ozone and subsequently received an Outstanding Scientific Paper award from NOAA’s Environmental Research Laboratory.

Paul C. Stern is a principal staff officer at the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences and director of its Standing Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change. His research interests include the determinants of environmentally significant behavior, particularly at the individual level; participatory processes for informing environmental decision making; processes for informing environmental decisions; and the governance of environmental resources and risks. He is a long-time contributor to behavioral science research on energy consumption and recently served on the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Interface between Psychology and Global Climate Change. He is coauthor of the textbook Environmental Problems and Human Behavior (2nd ed., 2002) and coeditor of numerous National Research Council publications, including Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making (2008), Decision Making for the Environment: Social and Behavioral Science Priorities (2005), The Drama of the Commons (2002), Environmentally Significant Consumption: Research Directions (1997), Understanding Risk (1996), Global Environmental Change: Understanding the Human Dimensions (1992), and Energy Use: The Human Dimension (1984). He coauthored the article “The Struggle to Govern the Commons”, which was published in Science in 2003 and won the 2005 Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychological Association. He holds a B.A. from Amherst College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Clark University, all in psychology.

Michael Vandenbergh, David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law, is a leading scholar in environmental and energy law whose research explores the relationship between formal legal regulation and informal social regulation of individual and corporate behavior. His work with Vanderbilt’s Climate Change Research Network involves interdisciplinary teams that focus on the reduction of carbon emissions from the individual and household sector. His corporate work explores private environmental governance and the influence of social norms on firm behavior and the ways in which private contracting can enhance or undermine public governance. Before joining Vanderbilt’s law faculty, Professor Vandenbergh was a partner at a national law firm in Washington, D.C. He served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1993 to 1995. He began his career as a law clerk for Judge Edward R. Becker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1987-88. In addition to directing Vanderbilt’s Climate Change Research Network, Professor Vandenbergh serves as co-director of the law school’s Energy, Environment and Land Use Program. He was named a David Daniels Allen Distinguished Professor of Law in fall 2013. A recipient of the Hall-Hartman Teaching Award, he teaches courses in environmental law, energy, and property. Professor Vandenbergh has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School and at Harvard Law School.