Elke Weber

Elke Weber is a cognitive psychologist and behavioral decision theorist. Her research draws from psychology, economics, sociology, ecology, and evolutionary biology to examine and model the decisions of individuals and groups as they deal with uncertainty and trade-offs in complex threats like climate change. She holds honorary doctorates from the University of Basel and Leuphana University. Over her career, Weber has contributed her expertise to numerous organizations in the US and beyond.

She has served on various National Academy of Sciences advisory committees on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, as a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Science Advisory Board, and on a Committee on Carbon Neutrality to the German government. Weber has also been a lead author on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth and Sixth Assessment Reports. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of both the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In 2016, she received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for Risk Analysis, in 2023 the Patrick Suppes Prize from the American Philosophical Society, in 2024 the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Social Sciences, in 2025 the Howard Crosby Warren Medal from Society for Experimental Psychology for the most significant advances in Experimental Psychology over the prior five years and the INSPIRE Award from University of Lausanne.