Dr. Michael J. Lynch is professor of Criminology in the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences. He came to USF in 1997 as the first director of the criminology department's new Ph.D. program. He is recognized as the founder of green criminology which involves the study of environmental harms, crime, justice, law and social control from a criminological perspective. Green criminology has expanded into a global intellectual movement. His research also addresses issues in radical criminology, corporate crime, environmental sociology, environmental justice, and racial biases in criminal justice processes. He is author/editor of 23 books and over 135 articles and 60 book chapters. As a mentor, he has chaired 28 completed doctoral dissertations, and 25 MA theses and area papers, and is a recipient of a William R. Jones most valuable mentor award for contributions to the education of McKnight Doctoral students in the state of Florida. His edited book, The Handbook on Inequality and the Environment, was selected a top-10 academic book of 2024 by the Association of College and Research Libraries (OAT Award). His 2023 article, "Green criminology and state-corporate crime: The Ecocide-genocide nexus with examples from Nigeria" was chosen as article of the year by the Division on White-Collar and Corporate Crime of the America Society of Criminology (ASC). He has two Lifetime Achievement Awards for Scholarly Contributions to criminology from the ASC: one for contributions to corporate and white-collar crime research, and the second from the Division on Critical Criminology and Social Justice for research in radical and green criminology. One of his influences was his father, Vincent DePaul Lynch, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at St. John's University (NY), who created the first undergraduate degree program in toxicology in the US.