Cynthia Rosenzweig

2022 World Food Prize Laureate and Adjunct Senior Research Scientist, Columbia Climate School

Rosenzweig spent four decades cultivating our understanding of the biophysical and socio-economic impacts that climate change and food systems have on each other – most recently by founding the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP), a global, transdisciplinary network of more than 1200 leading researchers in climate and food systems modeling.
 
Rosenzweig realized early on that climate change is one of the most significant, pervasive and complex challenges currently facing the planet’s food systems. She completed the first transdisciplinary model projections of how climate change will affect food production in North America and globally, and she was one of the first scientists to document that climate change was already impacting the cultivation of our food supply. Her early work contributed an important methodological breakthrough in early climate change impact assessments and established the foundations for current work in this field.
 
Now a Senior Research Scientist and head of the Climate Impacts Group at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), part of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Rosenzweig started her career as a farmer. Her research supports farmers in planning and implementing groundbreaking mechanisms that foster resilience to climate change.