Timothy D. Searchinger is a research scholar and lecturer at Princeton University. Before joining the German Marshall Fund, he was co-director of the Center for Conservation Incentives at Environmental Defense, where he supervised work on agricultural incentive programs.  He is a graduate, summa cum laude, of Amherst College and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School where he was Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal. Prior to working for Environmental Defense, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward R. Becker of the United States Court of Appeals and as Deputy General Counsel to Governor Robert P. Casey of Pennsylvania. During the last Farm Bill, Searchinger coordinated the "carrot coalition" of environmental and other groups working to influence farm policy.  He is the author of many articles on wetland protection, takings, agriculture and flood policy. He first proposed what has now become the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program to USDA and worked closely with state officials to develop programs now authorized to enroll roughly a million acres of buffer lands and wetlands to protect critical rivers and estuaries in Maryland, Minnesota, Illinois, Oregon and North Carolina.

Honors:
In 1992, he received a National Wetlands Protection Award from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Environmental Law Institute. He has authored numerous briefs in the Supreme Court on issues ranging from takings to age discrimination.