Stephen E. Zebiak, Ph.D., is Director-General of the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction. He has worked in the area of ocean-atmosphere interaction and climate variability since completing his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984.

Zebiak and Mark Cane, Ph.D., were the authors of the first dynamical model used to predict El Niño successfully. He has served on numerous advisory committees, including those for the US TOGA Program, the Atlantic Climate Change Program, the Pan American Climate Studies Program, the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Climate Variations, and the Center for the Study of Science and Religion (CSSR).

Zebiak was chair of the International CLIVAR Working Group on Seasonal-to-Interannual Prediction and he co-chaired the US CLIVAR Seasonal-to-Interannual Modeling and Prediction Panel. He is a member of the advisory board of the Canadian CLIVAR Research Network, the APEC Climate Network (APCN) Steering Committee, and the Committee on Strategic Guidance for NSF Support of Research in the Atmospheric Sciences.

Zebiak coordinates IRI coupled model efforts, data assimilation/forecast system development, predictability, and climate dynamics research for seasonal-to-interannual time scales. He also helps foster active collaboration between IRI and other national and international centers engaged in climate modeling and prediction.