Steven E. Koonin

Steven Elliot Koonin (born December 12, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist, environmental scientist, and former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. He is also a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering. From 2004 to 2009, Koonin was employed by BP as the oil and gas company’s Chief Scientist. From 2009 to 2011, he was Under Secretary for Science, Department of Energy, in the Obama administration. He later published Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters, for which he was widely condemned for promoting climate denial and labeled a climate change skeptic. In 2024, he became the Edward Teller Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In 2025, he was member of the United States Department of Energy's Climate Working Group -formed by five researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change- and coauthor the U.S. Department of Energy draft report, A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate that asserted that the danger from greenhouse gas emissions was exaggerated.