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ROBERT BERGSTROM

President & CEO, Bay Area Environmental Research Institute, Inc.
MSME ’69, Ph.D. '72

Dr. Robert Bergstrom is the founder and President of the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute (BAERI), a non-profit 50l(c)(3) public benefi t corporation dedicated to promoting and conducting research in the environmental sciences. Under the leadership of Dr. Bergstrom, BAERI has grown from a two-person institute to its present size of over 90 employees and over $12 million in annual revenues.  In 2012, Dr. Bergstrom was named the Principal Investigator for the NASA Ames Research Center Cooperative Research in Earth Science and Technology (ARC-CREST), a 10 year $137 million Cooperative Agreement with four institutions (BAER Institute, California State University at Monterey Bay, University of North Dakota and University of California at Davis).

Dr. Bergstrom holds a Bachelor’s degree from Oregon State University, and Master’s and Doctoral degrees from Purdue University in Mechanical Engineering. He completed post-doctoral research in atmospheric physics at the University of Mainz, Germany and also at NASA Ames Research Center. He has been involved in studies of the radiative properties of atmospheric aerosols since 1972 with over 50 publications. One of his publications, entitled Spectral Absorption Properties of Atmospheric Aerosols, was nominated for the H. Julian Allen award at NASA Ames Research Center in 2010.

Dr. Bergstrom holds a law degree from Stanford University and is a member of the California Bar.  Previous to founding BAERI he co-founded Legisoft, a legal software company.  Legisoft’s most popular product was WillMaker now sold by Intuit.  He also was an Assistant Regional Counsel for the USA Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco, CA for ten years bringing enforcement actions in environmental cases.  He received the EPA Gold Medal for Meritorious Service in 1991.

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