Our Team Flavio Lehner Chief Climate Scientist Dr. Flavio Lehner is Polar Bears International’s Chief Climate Scientist and an Assistant Professor in Earth and Atmospheric Science at Cornell University. He obtained a PhD in Climate Science from the University of Bern in Switzerland in 2013. After a brief engagement as Science Officer in the Technical Support Unit for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, he joined the Climate and Global Dynamics Lab at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in 2014, funded by a fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. After being awarded a NOAA postdoc fellowship, he continued on in NCAR’s Research Applications Lab. He then transitioned to a Project Scientist position at NCAR, leading and co-leading projects across NCAR labs. After a year as a Senior Scientist at ETH Zürich in Switzerland, Flavio joined Cornell University as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2020. His research group studies climate variability and change with a focus on physical processes that affect humans and ecosystems, from heatwaves and droughts to sea ice trends and precipitation extremes. Flavio is based in Ithaca, New York, and likes to enjoy the outdoors via cycling, kayaking, and skiing.