LeRoy Westerling is professor of management of complex systems and chair of the Graduate Council of the Academic Senate at UC Merced. Prior to coming to Merced in 2006, he was a postgraduate research meteorologist and project scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He holds a BA from UCLA in International Economics and Chinese Area Studies, and a joint PhD in Economics and International Affairs from UCSD. Research interests include drivers of extreme fire events, wildfire climatology, and modeling and scenario analysis for wildfire and impacts affecting vegetation, carbon, water, air pollution and public health, habitat, insurance, and infrastructure.