Rate My Professor Galen McKinley

Galen A. McKinley is Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the Geoscience faculty at Columbia University and Senior Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, with an affiliate appointment in Earth and Environmental Engineering. As an ocean, carbon cycle, and climate scientist, her research examines the physical, chemical, and ecological drivers of the global ocean’s uptake of anthropogenic carbon. She employs regional and global ocean and climate models, alongside data science techniques on large community datasets. From 2021 to 2023, she served as Deputy Director of the NSF Science and Technology Center for Learning the Earth with Artificial Intelligence and Physics (LEAP). Previously, she was Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2004 to 2017, including as Bryson Professor in the Center for Climatic Research.

She holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Rice University (1995) and a Ph.D. in Climate Physics and Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2002), followed by postdoctoral positions at Princeton University and Instituto Nacional de Ecología in Mexico. Notable awards include the 2020 American Geophysical Union Ocean Sciences Voyager Award, the 2012-2013 Defense Science Study Group, and the 2011 Class of 1955 Teaching Award from UW-Madison. McKinley contributes to the field through editorial roles, such as on the Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Science board, and committees including the National Academies Ocean Studies Board and International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project steering group. Key publications feature “Timescales for detection of trends in the ocean carbon sink” (Nature, 2016), “Natural variability and anthropogenic trends in the ocean carbon sink” (Annual Review of Marine Science, 2017), and contributions to the Global Carbon Budget assessments, such as 2023 (Earth System Science Data). Her research informs global carbon budgets and future ocean carbon sink projections.