Woods Hole Research Center Names New Deputy Director

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February 8, 2006

Kilaparti Ramakrishna (above) relinquishes his awesome power to Richard A. Houghton (below).

Dr. Kilaparti Ramakrishna, Deputy Director of the Woods Hole Research Center, has accepted a two-year appointment with the United Nations Division of Policy Development and Law in Nairobi, Kenya. Dr. R. A. Houghton has been appointed as the new Deputy Director.

According to Dr. John P. Holdren, director of the Center, “Rama has done a superb job representing the Center at home and around the world as its Deputy Director, as well as leading our Policy Program with immense energy and effectiveness. He will make a terrific leader of the Policy and Legal Division of the UN Environment Programme. We are hoping, nonetheless, that the UN will let us have him back at the end of his leave of absence, rather than making him Secretary-General. Skee Houghton is one of the world's leading authorities on the global carbon cycle and has been a scientific leader at the Center from its inception 20 years ago. He enjoys the highest respect and trust from the Center's staff and the community. I am delighted that he has agreed to succeed Rama as Deputy Director.”

Dr. Ramakrishna is an expert in international environmental law and has directed the Center's Program on Science in Public Affairs, which addresses is responsible for international issues including law and policy aspects associated with global climate change, conservation and utilization of world forests, biodiversity, environmental governance, and developing country perspectives. Dr. Ramakrishna served as a special advisor to the UN in drafting the Framework Convention on Climate Change. He helped establish an independent World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development, and worked with the Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity. He has been a Visiting Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, since 1993, was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, and a Fellow at the Marine Policy Center of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Dr. Ramakrishna is a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, a member of IUCN’s Commission on Environmental Law, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds a doctorate in international law of environment from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

He will continue to hold the Center's Sara Shallenberger Brown Chair in Environmental Policy during his leave of absence and hopes to return to it after his stint with the United Nations.

The objective of the Division of Policy Development and Law (DPDL) is to enable members of the international community to develop integrated and coherent policy responses to environmental problems and to strengthen environmental law as well as to improve compliance with and enforcement of legal instruments. The main activities of DPDL include analysis and development of environment-related policies, and articulation of policy positions in response to emerging environmental issues and events as well as development of new, and strengthening of, existing legal, economic and other policy instruments to make environmental policy more effective.

According to Dr. Ramakrishna, “The Center and what stands for are extremely important to me, and I am proud to have played a small part in its success. The opportunity that the assignment with United Nations provides is too important to miss. I hope to bring back the experiences of working with the UN system to the Center upon the completion of my assignment. I am most grateful to John Holdren and the Center and its Board of Trustees for affording me this.”

Dr. Houghton, who has been appointed as the new Deputy Director, is an ecologist with interests in the forests of the earth, the global carbon cycle, and climate change. He coordinates the Center’s efforts to understand the problems of global warming, especially the role biotic systems play in the process. He has participated in several international assessments of climate change and is currently involved in investigations of the effects of human activity on the forests of Africa, Amazonia, Russia, and the U.S. Prior to joining the Center in 1987, Dr. Houghton worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Marine Biological Laboratory. Houghton received a Ph.D. in ecology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1979 and an Honorary Doctorate from the Faculty of Forest Science, University of Munich in 1995. He was also a visiting scientist at NASA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. for two years.

Of the opportunity to serve the Center in this capacity, Dr. Houghton says, “I’m happy to do what I can to help support the Director and staff of the Center. There is certainly much to be done to understand and reverse current trends in the global environment, and the Center is an exciting and unique place for bringing science to bear in that realm.”

The Woods Hole Research Center is dedicated to science, education and public policy for a habitable Earth, seeking to conserve and sustain forests, soils, water, and energy by demonstrating their value to human health and economic prosperity. The Center has initiatives in the Amazon, the Arctic, Africa, Russia, Boreal North America, the Mid-Atlantic, and New England including Cape Cod. Center programs focus on the global carbon cycle, forest function, landcover/land use, water cycles and chemicals in the environment, science in public affairs, and education, providing primary data and enabling better appraisals of the trends in forests alter their role in the global carbon budget.