Linda Zall is an environmental scientist who previously worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.
While at the CIA she was responsible for establishing in 1992 a task force named Medea, which specialized in using spy satellite images to produce environmental data.
[3] Zall received a PhD in civil and environmental engineering from Cornell University (1976).
There, she led teams of scientists and became instrumental in realizing the potential power of spy satellites to keep track of numerous environmental problems and the changes that could be seen from space, an activity that she has called "environmental sleuthing."
Zall married and divorced Charles Sheffield, an English-born mathematician, physicist and science fiction writer.