Ted Parson is Joseph L. Sax Collegiate Professor of Law and Professor of Natural Resources & Environment at the University of Michigan. His research examines international environmental policy, the role of science and technology in public policy, and the political economy of regulation.

Parson's recent articles have appeared in Science, Climatic Change, Issues in Science and Technology, the Journal of Economic Literature, and the Annual Review of Energy and the Environment. His most recent books are The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change (Cambridge, 2006, with Andrew Dessler), and Protecting the Ozone Layer: Science and Strategy (Oxford, 2003), which won the 2004 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award of the International Studies Association.

Parson has chaired and served on several senior advisory committees for the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Government Global Change Research Program, including the Synthesis Team for the US National Assessment of Climate Impacts. In 2005, he was appointed to the National Advisory Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He has worked and consulted for the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the United Nations Environment Program, the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress, the Privy Council Office of the Government of Canada, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and spent twelve years on the faculty of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He holds degrees in Physics from the University of Toronto and in Management Science from the University of British Columbia, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard. In former lives, he was a professional classical musician and an organizer of grass-roots environmental groups.