Bing Professor of Environmental Science
Co-Director of the Center for Environmental Science and Policy
President emeritus, Stanford University

Donald Kennedy received AB and Ph.D. degrees in biology from Harvard. His research interests were originally in animal behavior and neurobiology -- in particular, the mechanisms by which animals generate and control patterned motor output. He came to Stanford in 1960, served as chairman of the Department of Biology from 1965 to 1972, and in 1973 became chairman of the Program in Human Biology an interdisciplinary undergraduate program that he helped create.

In 1977 Dr. Kennedy took a 2-1/2 year leave to serve as commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This followed an increasing academic interest in regulatory policy regarding health and the environment. Following his return to Stanford in 1979, Dr. Kennedy served for a year as provost and then for twelve years as President -- a time marked by renewed attention to undergraduate education and student commitment to public service, and by successful completion of the largest capital campaign in the history of higher education. During that time Kennedy continued to work on health and environmental policy issues, as a member of the Board of Directors of the Health Effects Institute (a non-profit organization devoted to mobile source emissions), and the California Nature Conservancy. He currently chairs the Advisory Board, Center for Science, Mathematics and Engineering Education, National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of Academic Duty (Harvard University Press, 1997), a book discussing some of the challenges facing American institutions of higher education.

His present research program, conducted partially through the Institute for International Studies, consists of interdisciplinary studies on the development of policies regarding such trans-boundary environmental problems as: major land-use changes; economically-driven alterations in agricultural practice; global climate change; and the development of regulatory policies. He co-directs the Center for Environmental Science and Policy in the Institute for International Studies. Kennedy, with several colleagues, recently completed Environmental Quality and Regional Conflict, an analysis for the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict.

Dr. Kennedy is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and served on the National Commission for Public Service, and the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government.