Stephen H. Schneider, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Environment Science and Policy of the Institute for International Studies, and Professor by Courtesy in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He is also co-director of the Center for Environmental Science and Policy and of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Environment and Resources.

A 1992 MacArthur Fellow, he has served as a consultant to federal agencies and/or White House staff in numerous administrations. In 1991, he won the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)/Westinghouse Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology for furthering public understanding of environmental science and its implications for public policy. A foreign member of the Academia Europaea, Earth and Cosmic Sciences Section and former chair of the AAAS Section on Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences (1999-2001), Schneider in 2002 was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

Schneider earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Plasma Physics from Columbia University in 1971. He studied the role of greenhouse gases and suspended particulate material on climate as a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in 1972, where he served on the scientific staff from 1973 to 1996. He serves as editor for the interdisciplinary journal, Climatic Change. He has authored, written and edited extensively and has appeared frequently on commercial and public broadcast shows.

He was a coordinating Lead Author in Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997-2001, and was a Lead Author in Working Group I from 1994-1996. He was also a Lead Author of the IPCC guidance paper on uncertainties. He is co-anchor of the IPCC Cross-Cutting Theme on Vulnerability for the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).