Barry Osmond is President and Executive Director of Columbia University's Biosphere 2 Center in Arizona, where is working to build a campus devoted to experimental climate change science. He has advised researchers in Japan and Sweden on concepts for Biosphere 3 and Boreosphere, a new generation of ecosystem research facilities.

A well-known Australian-born researcher in plant sciences, Osmond is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences (1978), of the Royal Society of London (1984) and of Germany's oldest scientific academy, the Leopoldina (2001). Osmond studies photosynthesis - the miracle in which plants turn sunlight, air and water into bread and wine, fuel and fibre - and was chairman of Photosynthesis 2001, the most recent international congress in this field. His best-known contributions deal with environmental plant biochemistry, physiology and ecology; especially in desert plants. His recent work deals with the interaction of light with high temperature, water and nutritional stresses, and the underlying physiological and biochemical mechanisms responses to excess light. Prior to his appointment at Columbia, he was Director of the Research School of Biological Sciences in the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University (1991-98), Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor at Duke University Department of Botany (1987-91) and Executive Director of the Biological Sciences Center, Desert Research Institute, University of Nevada, Reno (1982-86).