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Research Scholar in Ecology and Economics, Princeton University

Tim Searchinger is a Research Scholar whose work mingles ecology and economics and agronomy to analyze how to feed a growing world population while reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Searchinger's articles in Science about the land use implications of biofuels and the proper accounting of greenhouse gas emissions from bioenergy have significantly influenced he world debate on bioenergy. Ongoing research focuses on a simplified system for comparing the greenhouse gas consequences of different land uses, and a study for the World Resources Institute, the World Bank and various UN agencies on strategies for meeting 2050 food demands while reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Searchinger is also the director of the Agricultural Synergies Project, which is generating technical guidance and tools for boosting agricultural production in developing countries while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Prior to coming to Princeton in 2007, Searchinger spent seventeen years as an attorney at the national advocacy group, the Environmental Defense Fund, where he authored a prize-working book on wetlands, directed the group's work on agricultural policies, and led work to protect and restore the Everglades and the Mississippi River. Searchinger is a graduate, summa cum laude, of Amherst College and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School where he was Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal. He has also served as a law clerk to Judge Edward R. Becker of the United States Court of Appeals, as Deputy General Counsel to Governor Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, and as fellows at the Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute at Georgetown Law School, the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford, the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., and the World Resources Institute.

Experience

  • –present
    Research scholar in ecology and economics, Princeton University