Jane Lubchenco is Distinguished Professor of Zoology at Oregon State University. She has been a MacArthur Fellow and a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment. Dr. Lubchenco is a past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Ecological Society of America. She currently serves on the Council of the National Academy of Sciences and is President-Elect of the International Council for Science (ICSU). She serves on the Pew Oceans Commission, a national, independent Commission charged with advising the nation on protecting living marine resources.

Dr. Lubchenco was born and raised in Denver; educated at Colorado College (B.A.), the University of Washington (M.S.), and Harvard (Ph.D.); and has been awarded six honorary doctoral degrees, most recently from Princeton University. She was named Oregon Scientist of the Year in 1994 by the Oregon Academy of Sciences and has been honored by election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Dr. Lubchenco is serving her second term on the National Science Board, a position for which she was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by the US Senate. She chaired the Task Force, which drafted the milestone National Science Board report "Environmental Science and Engineering for the 21^st Century."

A marine ecologist by training, Dr. Lubchenco's current research interests include marine conservation, biological diversity, ecological causes and consequences of global changes, sustainable ecological systems, marine reserves and aquaculture. Her research focuses on rocky intertidal shores and near-shore coastal ecosystems around the world. She is the Principal Investigator for a $20 million research project, the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO): A Long-Term Ecological Consortium, a interdisciplinary team of scientists investigating the nearshore ecosystems along the coasts of Oregon and California. She co-chaired a Working Group on Marine Reserves at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Two of her papers have been named Science Citation Classics.

She co-founded and leads the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program that trains scientists to be better communicators to multiple audiences and is a principal in COMPASS, the Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea.

Dr. Lubchenco is a Director or Trustee of Environmental Defense, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, SeaWeb, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' Beijer Institute and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and she serves on numerous local, national and international advisory boards.

Dr. Lubchenco and her husband Dr. Bruce Menge, have been pioneers in pursuing novel solutions to combine family and academic careers. Each relinquished a full-time Assistant Professorship (Jane at Harvard and Bruce at the University of Massachusetts at Boston) to accept a half-time tenure-track Assistant Professorship at OSU in 1977. This arrangement of splitting a single faculty position allowed each to teach and conduct research, but also to spend significant amounts of time with their young children. After 13 years on fractional appointments, each resumed a full-time position. Their two sons are now in their 20's. In view of the success of this arrangement, Drs. Lubchenco and Menge are strong advocates for part-time but tenure-track faculty appointments.