UCLA Institute of the Environment names Glen M. MacDonald director

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The UCLA Institute of the Environment has named as director Glen M. MacDonald, an international authority on the environmental effects of climate change and drought. MacDonald, a UCLA professor of geography and of ecology and evolutionary biology, assumed the post July 1.

MacDonald uses lake sediment cores, tree rings and other data to produce records of climate and environmental change and then applies knowledge gained from those records to current environmental problems, including global warming. In 2008, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to research the potential effects of future droughts, a subject on which he is writing a book.

He succeeds Tom Smith, an ecology and evolutionary biology professor, who had served as acting director since August 2007.

-- Martha Groves