Robin Elizabeth Bell is Palisades Geophysical Institute (PGI) Lamont Research Professor at Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory and a past President of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2019–2021. Dr. Bell 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.

The Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) is the Earth Science research center of Columbia University. It focuses on climate and earth sciences and is located on a 189-acre campus in Palisades, New York, 18 miles (29 km) north of Manhattan on the Hudson River.