Peter Doran

Associate Professor and Graduate Director, Earth and Environmental Sciences

University of Illinois at Chicago

Peter Doran is an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a veteran of numerous expeditions to Antarctica and the Arctic in the pursuit of studying climate and ecosystem change. He leads a team annually to the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica as part of the National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network, of which the McMurdo site is one of 26 around the world. Dr. Doran’s research in the LTER Network has had direct application to issues on climate change, revealing both past changes via the use of paleoenvironmental proxies and instrumental data, and by providing a baseline for prediction of future changes in Antarctica and elsewhere. Dr. Doran has also led and participated in multidisciplinary discussions on environmental stewardship of various Antarctic environments subject to the international Antarctic Treaty.

Parts of Dr. Doran's research finding on Antarctic cooling are often incorrectly cited as evidence against global warming. He has spoken out about this in various media outlets such as NPR's /On the Media/, and a/ New York Times/ op-ed.

Dr. Doran is also involved in extreme environment research and its application to astrobiology. He is currently the lead investigator on two grants from the NASA Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets Program (see http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/projects.html). He is on various NASA review panels and working groups focused on future exploration of Mars and other locations of astrobiological interest.