Jennifer Burney

Jennifer Burney grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is now professor and the Marshall Saunders Chancellor's Endowed Chair in Global Climate Policy and Research at the University of California, San Diego, as part of the School of Global Policy and Strategy. She studied history and science at Harvard University and earned a PhD in physics from Stanford, developing a superconducting camera to capture images of cosmic bodies, like pulsars or exoplanets. After graduating, she worked for Solar Electric Light Fund on rural electrification, particularly in West Africa. Burney also serves as deputy director of Stanford's Center on Food Security and the Environment.

She worked as a postdoc, starting in 2008, at Stanford on food security and the environment. Some projects she has worked on include rural electrification, aerosol emissions, and high-yield farming. Burney and her team work towards analyzing data related to climate change and its effect on school food programs to improve their effectiveness. They have two children.