Steven Elliot Koonin (born December 12, 1951)[1] is an American theoretical physicist and former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University.

[7][8] In 2004, Koonin joined BP as their chief scientist, where he was responsible for guiding the company's long-range technology strategy, particularly in alternative and renewable energy sources.

[citation needed] In 2012, he was appointed the founding director of NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP).

[16] Koonin played a major role in the 1989 national controversy around cold fusion sparked by the research of Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons.

[19] At the conference, Steven Koonin, and Nathan Lewis gave devastating presentations based on the work of the Caltech cold fusion research group.

[26][27] The main points of the article were that: In an article in Slate,[28] climate physicist Raymond Pierrehumbert criticized Koonin's essay as "a litany of discredited arguments" with "nuggets of truth ... buried beneath a rubble of false or misleading claims from the standard climate skeptics' canon."

This is how science works, and in the case of climate, the early indications detected and attributed in the 1980s and 1990s, have come true, over and over again and sooner than anticipated... [Decision makers] are using the best and most honest science to inform prospective investments in abatement (reducing greenhouse gas emissions to diminish the estimated likelihoods of dangerous climate change impacts) and adaptation (reducing vulnerabilities to diminish their current and projected consequences).

[35] On August 21, 2023, an interview with Koonin was released via the Stanford University Hoover Institution video series, Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson.