Dr. Buffler served as Dean of the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, from 1991 to 1998 and has been a Professor since 1991. She received her BSN from Catholic University of America in 1960, and a master's degree in health administration and epidemiology and a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965 and 1973, respectively. She has served as an advisor to the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Public Health Service Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the National Research Council. She was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1992 and served as an officer for the Medical Sciences section from 1994-2000. She has served as President for the Society for Epidemiological Research (1986), the American College of Epidemiology (1992), and the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (1992-1993). In 1994, she was elected to the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences.