Education
DeFries received her Doctor of Philosophy in 1980 from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and her Bachelor of Arts in Earth Science in 1976 from Washington University.
DeFries received her Doctor of Philosophy in 1980 from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and her Bachelor of Arts in Earth Science in 1976 from Washington University.
She was one of 24 recipients of the 2007 MacArthur Fellowship, and was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2006. DeFries currently holds the Denning Family Chair in Sustainable Development in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, at Columbia University as well as a professorship at the University of Maryland, College Park where she has joint appointments in the Department of Geography and the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center. In April 2015, DeFries joined with a group of scholars in issuing The other authors were: John Asafu-Adjaye, Linus Blomqvist, Stewart Brand, Barry Brook, Erle Ellis, Christopher Foreman, David Keith, Martin Lewis, Mark Lynas, Ted Nordhaus, Roger A. Pielke, Junior., Rachel Pritzker, Joyashree Roy, Mark Sagoff, Michael Shellenberger, Robert Stone, and Peter Teague.
National Academy of Sciences.