Bio
Rebecca Efroymson is a Distinguished Scientist in the Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
Rebecca leads environmental and social science projects. Her recent research includes societal impacts, social acceptability, and derisking of energy facilities. She partners with the National Laboratory of the Rockies (formerly National Renewable Energy Laboratory) to investigate factors affecting siting and permitting of biorefineries, including local acceptance, opposition, and risk to development. Rebecca leads stakeholder engagement for the ORNL Climate Change Science Institute's Science & Technology for Applied Regional Solutions program. She is engaged in studies of extreme effects, including wildfire. She was coauthor of the 5th National Climate Assessment, energy chapter.
For the past 15 years, Rebecca Efroymson's research has addressed energy sustainability, especially environmental effects of bioenergy, such as water quality and quantity, biodiversity, pesticide use, land-use change, and ecosystem services and valuation. She coordinated a multi-agency study of environmental effects of potential biomass production for biofuel and bioproducts in the US in the 2016 Billion Ton report and updated some of the work in 2023. Rebecca coauthored the National Academies study on Sustainable Development of Algal Biofuels. She developed a causal analysis framework for land-use change with colleagues.
Early in her career Rebecca Efroymson developed ecological risk assessment frameworks for wind energy, petroleum exploration and production, remediation of contaminated sites, and rare species. She conducted ecological assessments of military training and testing, as well as historical chemical contamination at Department of Energy facilities. She coauthored a book on the latter topic.
Frequent collaborators include Esther S Parish | ORNL, Keith L Kline | ORNL, Matthew H Langholtz | ORNL, Teresa Mathews | ORNL, Lis Blanco — National Renewable Energy Laboratory (nrel.gov), Virginia Dale - Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (utk.edu), and Patricia Romero-Lankao | Department of Sociology (utoronto.ca).
Rebecca Efroymson is a former Editor-in-chief of Environmental Management and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Before coming to ORNL, she was a AAAS Science, Engineering, and Diplomacy Fellow at the US Agency for International Development. She has an M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental Toxicology from Cornell University and a B.A. in Biology and English from La Salle University.
Awards
Elected to rank of AAAS Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2008)
DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy-Energy Rock Star Award (2017); Oak Ridge National Laboratory Environmental Sciences Division Science Serving Society Team Award for Billion Ton report, volume 1 (2016); Special Event Award for algae chapter of Billion Ton report, volume 1 (2016); Holroyd (Science Alumni) Award Winner, La Salle University (2014); Oak Ridge National Laboratory Environmental Sciences Division Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award (2002); National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship awardee (1988-1991); Cornell University Olin and A. D. White graduate fellowships awardee (1987-1992); La Salle University full-tuition scholarship (1983-1987)
Education
M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental Toxicology from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
B.A. in Biology and English from La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA