Elena Irwin is a Distinguished University Professor at Ohio State University in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics and faculty director of the Sustainability Institute at Ohio State. Her research addresses the sustainability of human-natural systems at local and regional scales, with a focus on land use and ecosystem services across urban and rural areas.

Her current research includes coupled human-natural systems modeling of land use and water quality and the development of regional integrated assessment models to project the environmental and economic impacts of climate change in the Great Lakes region. She has been PI or Co-PI on multiple research projects totaling over $19 million in funding, including funding from the National Science Foundation, US Department of Agriculture, James S. McDonnell Foundation, and other private and public sources.

In August 2021, she was appointed by the US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator as an advisory member of the chartered Science Advisory Board (SAB) as well as the Agricultural Science Committee. She is also an elected member of the Agriculture and Applied Economics Association executive board, and in 2022 was selected as a fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE), the association’s highest honor. She has served on multiple national research committees with the National Research Council and National Science Foundation (NSF), including as a member of NSF’s Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education subcommittee on Sustainable Urban Systems (SUS). She previously served on the boards of the AERE and North American Council of Regional Science.

In her capacity as faculty director and co-founder of the Sustainability Institute at Ohio State, she provides leadership to interdisciplinary sustainability research and teaching across the university, including cultivating campus-wide collaborative research and curriculum development efforts. She collaborates with faculty leaders and faculty affiliates to grow interdisciplinary research in key areas of sustainability science, including healthy land water and air systems, sustainable and resilient communities, and sustainable energy and co-directs the overall activities of the institute along with Kate Bartter, executive director. Dr. Irwin earned her undergraduate degree in German and History from Washington University in St. Louis and her Ph.D in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Maryland.