Consortium Director of the Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center

Dr. Jessica Hellmann is the Consortium Director of the Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center. She is also the Executive Director and Ecolab Chair in Environmental Leadership at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment and Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior. Her research examines the impacts of climate change on natural and human systems, greenhouse gas emission reduction, and climate adaptation. She was among the first to propose and study techniques to reduce climate impacts on species and ecosystems through ecosystem management.

Her work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science, Nature, and leading ecological and conservation journals. She consults with governments, corporations, and non-profits to build investments in renewable energy and adaptation and has co-authored several climate assessment and adaptation planning efforts, including the biodiversity and ecosystem portions of the Chicago Climate Action Plan and the 2014 National Climate Assessment. 

In 2018, she co-founded Geofinancial Analytics, a private venture that benchmarks methane emissions in the oil and gas sector for financial investors and insurers. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Ecological Society of America. She serves on the boards of the National Audubon Society (a US conservation group), the Science Museum of Minnesota, and COMPASS (an NGO advancing societal engagement of scientists). 

Hellmann holds a BS from the University of Michigan and a PhD from Stanford University; she served as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Biodiversity Research; and she was formerly a faculty member at the University of Notre Dame.

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @jessicahellmann