Charles Kolstad is an internationally known economist who once served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana and has taught at universities in the U.S, Russia, and Belgium. He is interested in the roles information, uncertainty and learning play in environmental decision-making and regulation, and does much of his applied work in the area of climate change and energy markets.  He heads the National Science Foundation-funded Economics and Environmental Science PhD program at UCSB, was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize), is a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee charged with evaluating the U.S. Climate Change Research Program and is an advisor to the California Air Resources Board.  He is a former president of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, co-editor of the journal Review of Environmental Economics & Policy, and has written more than 100 publications, including the undergraduate text, Environmental Economics, which has been translated into Japanese, Spanish and Chinese.  Prof. Kolstad received his PhD from Stanford in 1982.