Mary R. Albert, PhD, is the Executive Director of the Ice Drilling Program Office, and Professor of Engineering at Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth. At Dartmouth she has taught classes on climate change and engineering on both the undergraduate and graduate level. The current research that Dr. Albert and her graduate students are addressing involves climate change in two ways: understanding evidence of past climate from polar firn cores, and also developing adaptation strategies and frameworks needed for communities under current climate change. Dr. Albert has led and participated in many research expeditions on both the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets; Albert Valley, Antarctica is named after her. She has served as an invited member of the Polar Research Board of the National Academies (2002-2006), invited Chair of the U.S. National Committee for the International Polar Year (2003-2005), invited member (1998-2001) and Chair (2000) of the NSF Advisory Committee for the Office of Polar Programs. She has served as Invited Review Coordinator of three National Academies of Science reports, and she is a Lifetime National Associate of the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science. Dr. Albert earned her B.S. in Mathematics from Penn State University, B.E. and M.S. in Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth, and a Ph.D. (1991) in Applied Mechanics and Engineering Sciences from the University of California, San Diego.
