Jennifer Burney is an environmental scientist whose research focuses on the coupled relationships between climate and food security – measuring air pollutant emissions and concentrations, quantifying the effects of climate and air pollution on land use, food systems, and human health. Her work seeks to understand how food production and consumption contribute to climate change, and it designs and evaluates technologies as well as strategies for adaptation and mitigation among the world’s farmers. She holds the Marshall Saunders Chancellor's Endowed Chair in Global Climate Policy and Research.

Much of her current research focuses on the developing world, and she is particularly interested in the science, technology and policy of short-lived climate pollutants, or SLCPs, and the role that mitigation of these compounds can play in meeting both climate and food security objectives.

She is a research affiliate at UC San Diego’s Policy Design and Evaluation Laboratory, a fellow at the Center on Food Security & the Environment at Stanford University and member of the National Geographic Explorers family. She leads the Science Policy Fellows Program at the School.