Professional Affiliation

Senior Fellow, Institute for Alternative Futures

Expert Bio

Robert L. Olson is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Alternative Futures. He was previously the Institute’s Director of Research and a member of its founding Board of Directors. Much of his recent work has focused on the environmental future, including projects with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to bring greater foresight into the Agency’s planning. He is a member of the National Advisory Council for Environmental Technology and Policy (NACEPT) and the primary author of the NACEPT report The Environmental Future. He is the author of Exploring the Future, editor of Mending the Earth and co-editor with David Rejeski of Environmentalism and the Technologies of Tomorrow. Formerly he served as a consultant to the Director and a Project Director at the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress. He was for several years a Fellow of the Center for Cooperative Global Development at the American University and has been a Resident Fellow at the University of Illinois Center for Advanced Study.