Lisa Palmer is the National Geographic Research Professor of Science Communication at the School of Media and Public Affairs. She is also an award-winning environmental and science journalist, author of HOT, HUNGRY PLANET: The Fight to Stop a Global Food Crisis in the Face of Climate Change (St. Martin’s Press; 2017), and senior editor and education lead at Planet Forward.

Palmer actively participates in the national and international discourse on science, sustainability and the environment through writing and publishing, speaking, developing and leading seminars, and providing analysis. She has written for a wide range of publications including the Nature family of journals, Yale E360, The Guardian, Nautilus, The New York Times, The New Republic, Ensia, Slate, and many others. Her book, HOT, HUNGRY PLANET, chronicles her travels around the world and the urgent innovations needed to feed a growing population amid climate change.

She was previously a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., where she conducted research on global food security, resilience, and policies related to sustainable agriculture. From 2015 to 2020, she was a senior fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center at the University of Maryland. In 2018, Palmer was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center residency on science for development. She is a professional member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, the National Association of Science Writers, and the D.C. Science Writers Association. She is a graduate of Boston University and Simmons College in Boston.