CCST Board Chair Emeritus
Charles F. Kennel
Charles F. Kennel
Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego
Founding Director and Chairman, International Advisory Board, Environment and Sustainability Initiative
University of California, San Diego
Charles F. Kennel served as CCST Council Chair from 2008-2011 and was elected Chairman of the CCST Board in 2014. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and educated in astronomy and astrophysics at Harvard and Princeton. He then joined the UCLA Department of Physics, developed a research career in space plasma physics and astrophysics, and eventually chaired the department . He eventually became the UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor, its chief academic officer. From 1994 to 1996, he was Associate Administrator at NASA for what was then called Mission to Planet Earth, the world’s largest Earth science program. His experiences at NASA convinced him to devote the rest of his career to Earth and environmental science. He was the ninth Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Vice Chancellor of Marine Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, from 1998 to 2006. Dr. Kennel now is a distinguished professor of atmospheric sciences, emeritus, at Scripps, and a Visiting Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge.
A member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, Kennel has served on many national and international boards and committees, including the Pew Oceans Commission; among others he chaired the NASA Advisory Council, and the National Academy of Science’s Space Studies Board.
He stepped down from the CCST Board in 2019.
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