Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
Showing 201-220 of 224 Results
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Leif Thomas
Professor of Earth System Science and, by courtesy, of Civil and Environmental Engineering and of Oceans
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPhysical oceanography; theory and numerical modeling of the ocean circulation; dynamics of ocean fronts and vortices; upper ocean processes; air-sea interaction.
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Barton Thompson
Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law, Professor of Environmental Social Sciences and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
BioA global expert on water and natural resources, Barton “Buzz” Thompson focuses on how to improve resource management through legal, institutional, and technological innovation. He was the founding Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, where he remains a Senior Fellow and directs the Water in the West program. He also has been a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at Stanford’s Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He founded the law school’s Environmental and Natural Resources Program. He also is a faculty member in Stanford’s Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER).
Professor Thompson served as Special Master for the United States Supreme Court in Montana v. Wyoming, an interstate water dispute involving the Yellowstone River system. He also is a former member of the Science Advisory Board of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. He chairs the boards of the Resources Legacy Fund and the Stanford Habitat Conservation Board, is a California trustee of The Nature Conservancy, and is a board member of the American Farmland Trust, the Sonoran Institute, and the Santa Lucia Conservancy.
Professor Thompson is of counsel to the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, where he specializes in water resources and was a partner prior to joining Stanford Law School. He also serves as an advisor to a major impact investment fund. He was a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist ’52 (BA ’48, MA ’48) of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Joseph T. Sneed of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. -
Shripad Tuljapurkar
The Dean and Virginia Morrison Professor of Population Studies
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsStochastic dynamics of human and natural populations; prehistoric societies; probability forecasts including sex ratios, mortality, aging and fiscal balance; life history evolution.
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Erika Veidis
Casual - Non-Exempt, Human and Planetary Health
Staff, Human and Planetary HealthBioErika Veidis is the Planetary Health Program Manager for the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health. Before joining the CIGH team, she spent three years at the Planetary Health Alliance, a non-profit organization housed at Harvard University focused on understanding and addressing the intersections between global environmental challenges and public health. In this role, she managed a global network of universities, NGOs, research institutes, and government entities and led community engagement, outreach, and education efforts. In addition to her work with the PHA, Erika conducted research in environmental economics, with a particular focus on microplastics and grassroots campaigns targeting relevant governmental and corporate policies, and worked in regenerative agriculture in rural Wisconsin. Most recently, Erika helped to launch a project highlighting Indigenous place names across California with the California Institute for Community, Art & Nature. Erika graduated from Harvard in 2015 with a BA in Government and Mind/Brain/Behavior, holds an MBA from Cal Poly, and serves on the board of the Harvard Alumni for Agriculture and Food.
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Peter Vitousek
Clifford G. Morrison Professor of Population and Resource Studies, Professor of Earth System Science, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor, by courtesy, of Biology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsVitousek's research interests include: evaluating the global cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus, and how they are altered by human activity; understanding how the interaction of land and culture contributed to the sustainability of Hawaiian (and other Pacific) agriculture and society before European contact; and working to make fertilizer applications more efficient and less environmentally damaging (especially in rapidly growing economies)
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Katie Vogelheim
Education Advisor, Human and Planetary Health
Staff, Human and Planetary HealthBioKatie Vogelheim is currently an Education Advisor to the Human and Planetary Health Initiative at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. She is also a member of the teaching team for Hacking for Climate Change, serves as an Innovation Coach for the Stanford Ecopreneurship program, and helped develop the Human and Planetary Action Lab series of project-based classes. In these capacities, Katie contributes to educating and mentoring students in addressing climate change challenges through innovative solutions.
Katie had a 30 year business career spanning several industries. Since 2010, she has directed funding to global nature based solution projects and early stage companies committed to a sustainable mission. From 2020-22, she joined Stanford as a Distinguished Career Institute Fellow, focused on Sustainability, Climate and Energy.
Katie works across campus developing curriculum and convening resources to advance human and planetary health efforts. She supplements this work with additional affiliations: serving on the Board of Dean’s Advisers at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, the Harvard Data Science Initiative, and Conservation International's Science and Leadership Councils. -
Virginia Walbot
Professor of Biology, Emerita
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur current focus is on maize anther development to understand how cell fate is specified. We discovered that hypoxia triggers specification of the archesporial (pre-meiotic) cells, and that these cells secrete a small protein MAC1 that patterns the adjacent soma to differentiate as endothecial and secondary parietal cell types. We also discovered a novel class of small RNA: 21-nt and 24-nt phasiRNAs that are exceptionally abundant in anthers and exhibit strict spatiotemporal dynamics.
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Shan X. Wang
Leland T. Edwards Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Electrical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Radiology (Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsShan Wang was named the Leland T. Edwards Professor in the School of Engineering in 2018. He directs the Center for Magnetic Nanotechnology and is a leading expert in biosensors, information storage and spintronics. His research and inventions span across a variety of areas including magnetic biochips, in vitro diagnostics, cancer biomarkers, magnetic nanoparticles, magnetic sensors, magnetoresistive random access memory, and magnetic integrated inductors.
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Yuan Wang
Assistant Professor of Earth System Science and Center Fellow, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment
BioYuan Wang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth System Science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He is also a Center Fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment. Prior to joining Stanford, he was an Associate Professor at Purdue University and a research scientist at California Institute of Technology. His research group aims to advance the understanding of the physical and chemical interactions between atmospheric constituents and climate change. Specifically, his group conducts research related to aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions and their climatic implications, aerosol properties and haze formation, cloud and precipitation microphysics, and the assessment of the greenhouse gas and aerosol forcings on the atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere. They develop and use hierarchical and multiscale weather and climate models in combination with space-borne and in situ measurements to address those scientific questions. Dr. Wang is a recipient of the James B. Macelwane Medal and James R. Holton Award from the American Geophysical Union, and Henry G. Houghton Award from the American Meteorological Society.
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Michael Wara
Senior Research Scholar
BioMichael Wara is a lawyer and scholar focused on climate and energy policy.
Wara is Director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program and a senior research scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment as well as Senior Director for Policy at the Sustainability Accelerator within the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Wara organizes and manages cross-functional teams of post docs, legal fellows and graduate students that provide fact-based, bipartisan, technical and legal assistance to policymakers, environmental justice advocates, and tribes engaged in the development of novel climate and energy law and regulation. He also facilitates the connection of Stanford faculty with cutting edge policy debates on climate, energy and climate impacts, leveraging Stanford’s energy, climate and natural resource expertise to craft real world solutions to these challenges.
Wara’s legal and policy scholarship focuses on wildfire, climate mitigation, energy innovation, and regulated industries. He collaborates with economists, engineers and scientists in research on the design and evaluation of technical and regulatory solutions to society's climate and energy challenges.
Wara has served as a Wildfire Commissioner for the California, as a member of the California Catastrophe Council, the oversight body of the California Wildfire Fund, as a consultant to the Senate pro Tem on wildfire issues, and as a consultant to CPUC and OEIS on utility wildfire risk management. Wara has served on multiple National Academy of Sciences and California Council on Science and Technology reports. He is also a member of the Tamalpais Design Review Board.
Prior to joining Woods, Wara was an associate professor at Stanford Law School and an associate in Holland & Knight’s government practice. He received his J.D. from Stanford Law School and his Ph.D. in Ocean Sciences from the University of California at Santa Cruz. -
Robert Waymouth
Robert Eckles Swain Professor of Chemistry and Professor, by courtesy, of Chemical Engineering
BioRobert Eckles Swain Professor in Chemistry Robert Waymouth investigates new catalytic strategies to create useful new molecules, including bioactive polymers, synthetic fuels, and sustainable plastics. In one such breakthrough, Professor Waymouth and Professor Wender developed a new class of gene delivery agents.
Born in 1960 in Warner Robins, Georgia, Robert Waymouth studied chemistry and mathematics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia (B.S. and B.A., respectively, both summa cum laude, 1982). He developed an interest in synthetic and mechanistic organometallic chemistry during his doctoral studies in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology under Professor R.H. Grubbs (Ph.D., 1987). His postdoctoral research with Professor Piero Pino at the Institut fur Polymere, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, focused on catalytic hydrogenation with chiral metallocene catalysts. He joined the Stanford University faculty as assistant professor in 1988, becoming full professor in 1997 and in 2000 the Robert Eckles Swain Professor of Chemistry.
Today, the Waymouth Group applies mechanistic principles to develop new concepts in catalysis, with particular focus on the development of organometallic and organic catalysts for the synthesis of complex macromolecular architectures. In organometallic catalysis, the group devised a highly selective alcohol oxidation catalyst that selectively oxidizes unprotected polyols and carbohydrates to alpha-hyroxyketones. In collaboration with Dr. James Hedrick of IBM, we have developed a platform of highly active organic catalysts and continuous flow reactors that provide access to polymer architectures that are difficult to access by conventional approaches.
The Waymouth group has devised selective organocatalytic strategies for the synthesis of functional degradable polymers and oligomers that function as "molecular transporters" to deliver genes, drugs and probes into cells and live animals. These advances led to the joint discovery with the Wender group of a general, safe, and remarkably effective concept for RNA delivery based on a new class of synthetic cationic materials, Charge-Altering Releasable Transporters (CARTs). This technology has been shown to be effective for mRNA based cancer vaccines. -
Barry R. Weingast
Ward C. Krebs Family Professor and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and, by courtesy, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
On Leave from 01/01/2025 To 06/30/2025BioBarry R. Weingast is the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor, Department of Political Science, and a Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution. He served as Chair, Department of Political Science, from 1996 through 2001. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Weingast’s research focuses on the political foundation of markets, economic reform, and regulation. He has written extensively on problems of political economy of development, federalism and decentralization, legal institutions and the rule of law, and democracy. Weingast is co-author of Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (with Douglass C. North and John Joseph Wallis, 2009, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) and Analytic Narratives (1998, Princeton). He edited (with Donald Wittman) The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy (Oxford University Press, 2006). Weingast has won numerous awards, including the William H. Riker Prize, the Heinz Eulau Prize (with Ken Shepsle), the Franklin L. Burdette Pi Sigma Alpha Award (with Kenneth Schultz), and the James L. Barr Memorial Prize in Public Economics. -
Leif Wenar
Olive H. Palmer Professor of the Humanities, Professor of Philosophy, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
BioLeif Wenar is a political philosopher. After receiving his AB at Stanford, he earned his PhD at Harvard, worked in Britain, and returned to Stanford in 2020.
He is the author of Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World and the author-meets-critics volume Beyond Blood Oil: Philosophy, Policy, and the Future. He is also the author of the entries for ‘John Rawls’ and ‘Rights’ in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. His articles have appeared in Mind, Analysis, Philosophy & Public Affairs, Ethics, The Journal of Political Philosophy, The Columbia Law Review, and The Philosopher’s Annual. He co-edited Giving Well: The Ethics of Philanthropy, as well as an autobiographical volume by the economist FA Hayek.
He has been a Visiting Professor at the Stanford Center on Ethics and Society, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, the William H. Bonsall Visiting Professor in the Stanford Philosophy Department, a Laurance S. Rockefeller Fellow and a Visiting Professor at Princeton’s University Center for Human Values, a Visiting Professor at the Princeton Department of Politics, a Fellow of the Program on Justice and the World Economy at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at The Murphy Institute of Political Economy, and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University School of Philosophy.
His public writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, and the playbill for the White Light Festival at Lincoln Center. In London, he served for several years on the Mayor’s Policing Ethics Panel, which advises the Mayor and the Metropolitan Police on issues such as digital surveillance and the use of force.
He is currently developing unity theory, a foundational account of what makes for more valuable lives, relationships, and societies. His published work can be found at wenar.info. -
John Weyant
Professor (Research) of Management Science and Engineering and of Energy Science Engineering
BioJohn P. Weyant is Professor of Management Science and Engineering and Director of the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy and an an affiliated faculty member of the Stanford School of Earth, Environment and Energy Sciences, the Woods Institute for the Environment, and the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford. His current research focuses on analysis of multi-sector, multi-region coupled human and earth systems dynamics, global change systems analysis, energy technology assessment, and models for strategic planning.
Weyant was a founder and serves as chairman of the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC), a seventeen-year old collaboration among over 60 member institutions from around the world. He has been an active adviser to the United Nations, the European Commission, U.S.Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of State, and the Environmental Protection Agency. In California, he has been and adviser to the California Air Resources, the California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission..
Weyant was awarded the US Association for Energy Economics’ 2008 Adelmann-Frankel award for unique and innovative contributions to the field of energy economics and the award for outstanding lifetime contributions to the Profession for 2017 from the International Association for Energy Economics, and a Life Time Achievement award from the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium in 2018. Weyant was honored in 2007 as a major contributor to the Nobel Peace prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in 2008 by Chairman Mary Nichols for contributions to the to the California Air Resources Board's Economic and Technology Advancement Advisory Committee on AB 32.
Fields of Specialization:
Energy/Environmental Policy Analysis, Strategic Planning
Interests:
Overall goal is to accelerate the use of systems models at state, country, and global scales, aiming to provide the best available information and insights to government and private-sector decision makers. Specific areas include energy, climate change, and sustainable development policy, including emerging technologies and market design alternatives. Draws on concepts and techniques from science and engineering fundamentals (e.g., thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, materials science, and electrical power systems), operations research, economics, finance, and decision theory. -
Mele Wheaton
Associate Director of Program Strategy, Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources
Current Role at StanfordAssociate Director of Program Strategy (E-IPER)
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Elliott White Jr.
Assistant Professor of Earth System Science and Center Fellow, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment
BioElliott White Jr. is an assistant professor of Earth System Science. He is a coastal ecosystem scientist that studies the effects of saltwater intrusion and sea level rise (SWISLR) on vegetation in the coastal land margin. His research experience in wetlands spans the North American Coastal Plain of the US, in addition to constructed prairie potholes in Iowa. His interdisciplinary approach to research draws from ecology, hydrology, biogeochemistry, and remote sensing. He is expanding his research to also understand the effects of SWISLR on humans living in the coastal zone. He received a BS in Biology and Animal Ecology from Iowa State University in 2015 and PhD in Environmental Engineering Sciences from the University of Florida in 2019. For more information you can visit: https://coasts.stanford.edu/.
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Earle Wilson
Assistant Professor of Earth System Science, by courtesy, of Geophysics, of Oceans and Center Fellow, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment
BioEarle Wilson is an assistant professor in the Department of Earth System Science. He is a physical oceanographer who studies ocean dynamics at high latitudes and their far-reaching impacts on the global climate. He is particularly interested in the circulation of the Southern Ocean and its interactions with the cryosphere (i.e., sea ice and marine-terminating glaciers). Dr. Wilson and his group explore these research questions using various tools and methods, ranging from in situ ocean observations and idealized numerical models.
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Frank Wolak
Holbrook Working Professor of Price Theory and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
On Partial Leave from 09/01/2024 To 08/31/2025BioFrank A. Wolak is the Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in the Department of Economics and the Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University. His research and teaching focuses on design, performance, and monitoring of energy and environmental markets. He served as Chair of the Market Surveillance Committee (MSC) of the California Independent System Operator and was a member of the Emissions Market Advisory Committee (EMAC) for California’s Market for Greenhouse Gas Emissions allowances.
