Jay Lehr, Ph.D.

Jay Lehr, Ph.D. (jlehr@heartland.org) is science director at The Heartland Institute, an independent nonprofit organization based in Chicago. He is an internationally renowned speaker, scientist, and author who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on environmental issues, and consulted with nearly every agency of the federal government, as well as many foreign countries.

Dr. Lehr is a leading authority on groundwater hydrology. After graduating from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological Engineering, he went on to receive the nation’s first Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers.

Dr. Lehr is the author of more than 1,000 magazine and journal articles and 30 books. He is editor of Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns, McGraw-Hill’s Handbook on Environmental Science, Health and Technology (2000); Wiley’s Remediation Technologies Handbook (2004); the Environmental Instrumentation and Analysis Handbook (2005), the six-volume Water Encyclopedia (Wiley Interscience, 2005); and Wiley Interscience's Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia: Science, Technology, and Applications (2011).

Dr. Lehr has spoken in front of thousands of audiences on topics ranging from global warming and biotechnology, to business management and health and physical fitness. He invariably receives the highest scores for entertaining and energizing even the largest audiences.

He was featured in Parachute Magazine in March 2010 for setting a new world record for having jumped from an airplane each and every month for 32 years.