Inez Fung

Inez Fung (; born April 11, 1949) is a professor of atmospheric science at the University of California, Berkeley, jointly appointed in the department of earth and planetary science and the department of environmental science, policy and management. She is also the co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment.

She is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society and a fellow in both the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. Since 2021, she has been a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Early life and education

Inez Fung was born and grew up in Hong Kong, which was then a British colony. She spoke Chinese at home and learned English at school. Her parents did not have secondary education and thought it was important for their four children to have educational opportunities. She graduated from King's College, Hong Kong, in 1967. Fung transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving her Bachelor of Science in applied mathematics in 1971. Studying under Jule Gregory Charney at MIT, she wrote her doctoral thesis on the "organization of spiral rainbands in a hurricane," She won the Rossby Award for "outstanding thesis of the year." She received her Sc.D. in 1977, becoming the second woman to graduate from MIT with a doctorate in Meteorology.

Career

She joined the National Academy of Sciences in 1977, working as a research associate until 1979 before she joined the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, a position Fung held until 1986 when she was promoted to the position of Adjunct Associate Research Scientist at the Observatory. In 1986 she was also hired as a Physical Scientist for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. That same year she began to serve as a member of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Climate Research Committee until 1989. She served as the Journal of Climate's associate editor from 1988 to 1989 and as the full-time editor from 1996 to 1998. In the spring of 1988, Fung was a visiting associate professor at the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of Washington and was the adjunct professor, Division of Applied Mathematics, Department of Applied Physics at Columbia from 1989 to 1993. During the last decade, she contributed to both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third and Fourth Assessment reports.

In 2006, she joined with 17 other climate scientists to file an amicus curiae brief in Massachusetts v. EPA to support the need for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

Personal life Fung lives in Berkeley, California and is married to Oceanographer Jim Bishop, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley. In her personal time she enjoys science fiction movies.

Honors and recognition 2019 Foreign Member of the Royal Society 2019 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal from the American Meteorological Society (AMS) 2010 Member of the Academia Sinica 2007 National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Climate System Model Distinguished Achievement Award 2005 Scientific American 50 award 2004 Roger Revelle Medal, American Geophysical Union 2002 Henry W. Kendall Memorial lecturer in Global Change Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1997–2002 NASA Goddard Senior Fellow 1990–1997 NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Most Valuable Paper Award 1987–1993 NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Peer Award 1977 C.G. Rossby Award for the outstanding thesis of the year, Department of Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology