Eugene A. Rosa is the Boeing Distinguished Professor of Environmental Sociology, the Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor of Natural Resource and Environmental Policy in the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service, and Professor, and past chair, of Sociology, Faculty Associate in the Social and Economic Sciences Research Center, Affiliated Professor in the Program in Environmental Science, Affiliated Professor of Fine Arts, and Faculty Associate, Center for Environmental Research, Education, and Outreach (CEREO). He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.

Professor Rosa received his B.S. with high honors (1967) from the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York.  His M.A. (1975) and Ph.D. (1976) in social science are from the Maxwell Graduate School of Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.  He then completed postgraduate work in neurosciences and in energy studies at Stanford University where he also served as a research associate and instructor.  In 1978, Dr. Rosa joined the faculty of Washington State University as an assistant professor and Coordinator of the Public Opinion Laboratory.

His research program has focused on environmental topics—particularly energy, technology, risk issues, and global environmental change—with attention to both theoretical and policy concerns. His current research focuses on two complementary topics: technological risk and global environmental change. Among his major risk projects were the development of logic for categorizing risks and a comparative study of risk perceptions between Americans and Japanese. He has served on the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Standing Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, on the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences (NRC/NAS) Nuclear Radiation Study Board, and on the (NRC/NAS) Committee on the Staging of Nuclear Repositories, and publishes on risky technologies, such as nuclear power and biotechnology, and on risks with deep uncertainty, such as the long-term sequestration of toxic and dangerous materials. The principal activities associated with the second topic, global environmental change, are past memberships on three NRC/NAS Committees and one Panel: The Human Dimensions of Global Change Committee, The Committee to Review the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan, The Committee on Metrics for Global Change Research, and the Panel on NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) New Sectors Applications Research Program. His global change research is devoted to specifying the anthropogenic (human) causes of greenhouse gases, ecological footprints, to the historical relationships between CO₂ loads and societal well-being, to the history of social thought on climate, and to testing theories of environmental impacts. The global environmental change research is conducted within the STIRPAT Program which he co-founded in 1994. STIRPAT publications won the 2002-2004 Outstanding Publication Award of the Section on Environment and Technology of the American Sociological Association.

He is widely published, including articles in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Sociological Review, AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Ecological Economics, Social Forces, American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Industrial Ecology, Social Problems, Social Science Research, Population and Environment, Journal of Environmental Studies and Science, Journal of Applied Geography, Nature and Culture, International Sociology, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Journal of Risk Research, Risk Analysis, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Annual Review of Sociology, Sociological Symposium, Human Ecology Review, Society and Natural Resources, Physics and Society, Social Science Quarterly, Organization and Environment, Safety Science, and Contemporary Sociology, as well as numerous technical reports.  His co-edited books, Public Reactions to Nuclear Power: Are There Critical Masses?  and Public Reactions to Nuclear Waste: Citizens' Views of Repository Siting were acclaimed by both academics and policymakers.  His co-authored book, Risk, Uncertainty, and Rational Action won the 2000-2002 Outstanding Publication Award of the Section on Environment and Technology of the American Sociological Association.  His recently (2010) co-edited book, Human Footprints on the Global Environment: Threats to Sustainability won the 2010 Gerald L. Young Distinguished Scholarly Book Award of the Society for Human Ecology.

He has been a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of California—Berkeley, twice at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria, at the IFF Institute for Social Ecology, Vienna and at the University of Stuttgart, an Adjunct Professor, Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, Fondation Nationale Des Siences Politiques, Institut D’Etudes Politique, Paris, Visiting Professor, Université Montesquieu, Bordeaux IV, and a Visiting Scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Professor Rosa has given keynote addresses at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, at the University of Cambridge, at the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, at the First World Forum of the International Sociological Association, at Renmin University, Beijing, at the East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii and at the Festschrift for Nobel Laureate Glenn T. Seaborg, Richland, Washington and numerous invited lectures and seminars in the United States and many foreign countries.  He was twice appointed by Governor Booth Gardner to the Washington State Nuclear Waste Advisory Council.

While a Visiting Scientist at Brookhaven he was responsible for designing and conducting the critical feasibility test of a computer-assisted methodology for assessing the risks of operator errors in commercial nuclear control rooms.  That methodology was adopted for human reliability assessments in some U.S. nuclear power plants and by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) as a basis for investigating human error possibilities during shuttle lift-off, orbiting, and manual landing scenarios.

His honors include The WSU College of Liberal Arts Career Achievement In Scholarship Award in 2011 and its Excellence in Professional Service Award in 2010, the WSU Distinguished Faculty Address in 2007, the WSU Distinguished Achievement Award of the College of Liberal Arts in 2006, his election, in 2003, as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and in 1999 the Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociology of the Environment and Technology by the Environment and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association.  Furthermore, several of his publications have received awards for excellence.  In 2003 he gave the keynote address for the dedication of the Jeanne X. Kasperson Research Library at Clark University.  Professor Rosa served as Vice-president of the Research Committee on Environment and Society of the International Sociological Association from 2002-2006 and is the Chair of Section K of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He has been elected to the Sociological Research Association and Sigma XI and is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who's Who in Science and Engineering, Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in the West, Who's Who in Education, American Men and Women of Science, Men of Achievement among others.

Last Revision: January 2012