Alex de Sherbinin, Ph.D.
Director at the Center for Integrated Earth System Information (CIESIN) Lecturer in Professional Studies, Sustainability Science
Dr. Alex de Sherbinin is director of CIESIN and a Senior Research Scientist in the Columbia Climate School. He is a geographer whose research interests focus on the human aspects of global environmental change and geospatial data applications, integration, and dissemination. He has authored or co-authored more than 75 journal articles, and is the lead author of articles appearing in Annual Reviews of Environment and Resource, Climatic Change, Environmental Research Letters, Global Environmental Change, Science, and Scientific American. He serves as section chief editor on Climate Mobility for Frontiers in Climate. His research centers on climate vulnerability mapping; climate change and migration; environmental indicators; citizen science data; and remote sensing applications. He is a co-author of the World Bank’s Groundswell report series, and the biennial Environmental Performance Index (EPI), and teaches in Columbia’s Climate & Society and Sustainability Science master’s degree programs. He has served as a principal investigator on projects totaling more than $37 million from funding sources that include NASA, USAID, DOD, the World Bank, and various UN agencies and foundations.
Dr. de Sherbinin currently serves as a Council member of the American Geographical Society (AGS), and served as a member then chair of the World Data System (WDS) scientific committee from 2015 to 2022. He has served on many other scientific and advisory committees for data and research programs in the US and Europe.
Alex de Sherbinin holds a PhD in geo-information science and Earth observation from ITC at the University of Twente (Netherlands), and MA and BA degrees in geography from Syracuse University and Dartmouth College, respectively. Prior to joining CIESIN, he served as a USAID-funded Population-Environment Fellow with the Social Policy Program of International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN, Gland, Switzerland), and a Population Geographer at the Population Reference Bureau (PRB, Washington DC).