Dr. Ravishankara is a Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. He was at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Aeronomy Laboratory and, later, Chemical Sciences Division (CSD, now Chemical Sciences Laboratory) of Earth System Research Laboratory for nearly 30 years in Boulder, CO. There, he served as the Director of CSD from 2006 through 2014 and was a Senior Scientist at the Aeronomy Laboratory prior to the Directorship. While at NOAA, he was a Professor Adjoint at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in the Chemistry Department. Before coming to NOAA, he was at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. He got his Ph.D. from the University of Florida (with Prof. Robert J. Hanrahan) and did a one-year post-doctoral stint at the University of Maryland (with Prof. D. Douglas Davis) before moving to Georgia Tech.
RESEARCH
Dr. Ravishankara has worked over the four decades on the chemistry of the Earth’s atmosphere as it relates to stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change, and regional air quality. His measurements in the laboratory and in the atmosphere have contributed to deciphering the ozone layer depletion, including the ozone hole; to identifying environmentally acceptable substitutes for ozone-depleting substance; to quantifying the role of chemically active species on climate; and to advancing the understanding of the formation, removal, and properties of pollutants. In the past decade he has been working on atmospheric modeling of air quality (especially in India) and issues related to policy on climate and air quality, some fundamental laboratory studies. He is an author or coauthor of nearly 400 peer-reviewed publications and many evaluations of the NASA/JPL Evaluation panel on Chemical Kinetics and Photohemistry of the Stratospheric Processes.
EXTERNAL INVOLVEMENT
Dr. Ravishankara is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, as well as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (London) and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy. He is also a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, of the Royal Society of Chemistry, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. His many awards include the Polanyi Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Stratospheric Ozone Protection award of the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the American Chemical Society’s award for Creative Advances in Environmental Sciences. He has presented numerous named lectures and invited talks across the globe.
He was a co-chair of the WMO/UNEP Science Assessment Panel on Stratospheric Ozone from 2006 till 2014. He was the Chair of the Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate of the US National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council from 2015 through 2020. He is a member of the Science Advisory Panel of the Climate Clean Air Coalition of UNEP. He is currently the chair of the Vienna Trust Fund of the United National Environmental Programme. He has served or continues to serve on many national and international committees. He is currently on the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and Current Science. He has previously been on the Editorial Board of Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, Chemical Physics Research Letters, ACS Central Science, and International Journal of Chemical Kinetics. He also served as an Editor of Geophysical Research Letters of the American Geophysical Union. He is currently serving on AGU’s Union Fellows Committee.