Founder, President, and Research Director, BAER Institute, San Francisco, California

While studying mechanical engineering at Oregon State, Robert Bergstrom specialized in heat transfer. After graduating, he earned a master’s and Ph.D. from Purdue, and applied his knowledge to the problem of climate change. "Climate change is really a heat transfer problem," he said. Bergstrom joined NASA’s Ames Research Center as a national research associate in 1974. He was called to testify as an expert witness in several court cases, and those experiences piqued his interest in the law, so he obtained a law degree from Stanford in 1983.

He became a member of the California Bar and worked as an environmental attorney for about a year before signing on at the Environmental Protection Agency as assistant regional counsel for the San Francisco region. He received an EPA Gold Medal for Meritorious Service in 1991.During that time, Bergstrom also co-founded Legisoft, which produced a best selling software application called WillMaker (now an Intuit product).Bergstrom wanted to continue his research on air pollution, so he sought funding to quantify the effects of soot on increased solar radiation in the atmosphere and its consequent contributions to climate change.

He reconnected with his colleagues at Ames, and by 1992 had founded the BAER Institute, a nonprofit research group, to facilitate funding for his research. The BAER Institute has grown to provide a research home for about 100 scientists. "It gives researchers a home where they get decent benefits — a retirement plan, medical insurance, and that kind of thing — so it’s actually worked out quite well," said Bergstrom."Climate change is really a heat transfer problem."

Degrees

• B.S. Mechanical Engineering, 1968