Deborah J. Campbell

Dr. Deborah Campbell co-leads MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Climate Change Initiative, which is growing the Laboratory’s investments in climate change R&D and increasing its collaborations within the U.S. and around the world to innovate new systems and solutions. This work brings together the Laboratory’s multidisciplinary expertise in areas including systems analysis, sensing and sensing architectures, artificial intelligence, and decision support to contribute to the global response to this challenge.

Campbell co-leads and serves as the executive director of the Climate Resilience Early Warning System Network, one of MIT’s five flagship Climate Grand Challenges projects. She served on MIT’s Climate Action Advisory Committee during the development of “Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade,” and was a member of the MIT campus–Lincoln Laboratory team that designed and built the MIT Covid-19 Response System. As a senior staff scientist in the Laboratory’s Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Systems (HADR) Group, Campbell works at the nexus of climate change, health, and environmental equity.

Prior to joining the HADR Group, Campbell served as an associate technology officer in the Laboratory's Director’s Office. In her earlier work at the Laboratory, she applied her analytical chemistry expertise to chemical and biological threat detection and to forensics and attribution, and led a significant portfolio of programs in these areas. Campbell earned a BS degree in chemistry from Bates College and a PhD degree in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.