David Policansky is associate director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology at the National Research Council, where he directs studies on applied ecology and natural resource management. He is a member of the Ecological Society of America and its Sustainable Biosphere Initiative Steering Committee, and of the American Fisheries Society, and chairs the advisory councils to the University of Alaska's School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences and the University of British Columbia's Fisheries Centre. His interests include genetics, evolution, and ecology, and he is known to be the expert on these issues in the Bering Sea.
Policansky is very interested in the ways in which science is shaping law and policy. At the National Research Council he has directed more than twenty projects on natural resources and ecological risk assessment, including recent reports on the Endangered Species Act, salmon in the Pacific Northwest, wetlands delineation, enhancing water supplies in the Middle East, and ecosystem-based approaches to the management of marine fisheries.