Dr. Robin E. Bell is the Director of the ADVANCE program at the Earth Institute. She is also a Doherty Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, where she directs major research programs on the Hudson River and Antarctica.

Dr. Bell has studied the mechanisms of ice sheet collapse and the chilly environments beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, including Lake Vostok, and she has led seven major aero-geophysical expeditions to Antarctica. After receiving her undergraduate degree from Middlebury College in Vermont, she built a 24-foot dory, which she sailed and rowed down the Hudson River past Lamont and Columbia on to Woods Hole where she worked for several years. Returning to the Hudson River Valley, she received her doctorate in marine geophysics from Columbia University. Presently she is chair of the National Academy of the Sciences Polar Research Board and Vice Chair of the International Planning Group for the International Polar Year.

Click here to view Dr. Bell's CV.