David Battisti is The Tamaki Endowed Chair of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. David received a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences (1988) from the University of Washington. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin until 1990. Since then, he has been on the Faculty in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, and has served as the Director of JISAO (1997-2003) and of the UW's Earth Initiative (2003-2006).

Battisti's research is focused on understanding the natural variability of the climate system. He is especially interested in understanding how the interactions between the ocean, atmosphere, land and sea ice lead to variability in climate on time scales from seasonal to decades. His previous research includes coastal oceanography, the physics of the El Nino/Southern Osciallation (ENSO) phenomenon, abrupt climate change during the last glacial period, and variability in the coupled atmosphere/sea ice system in the Arctic. Battisti is presently working to improve the El Nino models and their forecast skill, to better understand variability in the midlatitude atmosphere/ocean system, and to better understand the monsoons. He is also working on the impacts of climate variability and climate change on food production in Mexico, Indonesia and China.

Battisti has served on numerous international science panels, on Committees of the National Research Council. He served for five years as co-chair of the Science Steering Committee for the U.S. Program on Climate (US CLIVAR) and is co-author of several international science plans. He has published over 150 papers in peer-review journals in atmospheric sciences and oceanography, and twice been awarded distinguished teaching awards. He has received many awards both for research and teaching, most recently the Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America and the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal of the American Meteorological Society, the highest award of the AMS. Additionally, he is a Fellow at the Food Security Institute at Stanford University, the Carnegie Centennial Professor of Scotland, and a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union.