Robin Elizabeth Bell is a professor at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the current President of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). She was influential in co-ordinating the 2007 International Polar Year and was the first woman to chair the National Academy of Sciences Polar Research Board. She has made numerous important discoveries with regard to subglacial lakes and ice sheet dynamics, and has a ridge, called Bell Buttress, in Antarctica named after her.