Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability


Showing 201-220 of 376 Results

  • Alexandra Konings

    Alexandra Konings

    Associate Professor of Earth System Science, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and, by courtesy, of Geophysics

    BioAlexandra Konings leads the Remote Sensing Ecohydrology group, which studies interactions between the global carbon and water cycles. That is, her research studies how changes in hydrological conditions change ecosystems, and how this in turn feeds back to weather and climate. These interactions include studies of transpiration and root water uptake, photosynthesis, mortality, and fire processes, among others. To address these topics, the groups primarily uses the tools of model development and remote sensing (satellite) data, especially microwave remote sensing data of vegetation water content. Alex believes that a deep understanding of remote sensing techniques and how they can be used to create environmental datasets enables new opportunities for scientific insight and vice versa.

  • Jeffrey R. Koseff

    Jeffrey R. Koseff

    William Alden Campbell and Martha Campbell Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Oceans, Emeritus

    BioJeff Koseff, founding co-director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, is an expert in the interdisciplinary domain of environmental fluid mechanics. His research falls in the interdisciplinary domain of environmental fluid mechanics and focuses on the interaction between physical and biological systems in natural aquatic environments. Current research activities are in the general area of environmental fluid mechanics and focus on: turbulence and internal wave dynamics in stratified flows, coral reef and sea-grass hydrodynamics, the role of natural systems in coastal protection, and flow through terrestrial and marine canopies. Most recently he has begun to focus on the interaction between gravity currents and breaking internal waves in the near-coastal environment, and the transport of marine microplastics. Koseff was formerly the Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the Senior Associate Dean of Engineering at Stanford, and has served on the Board of Governors of The Israel Institute of Technology, and has been a member of the Visiting Committees of the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Carnegie-Mellon University, The Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research, and Cornell University. He has also been a member of review committees for the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan, The WHOI-MIT Joint Program, and the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment. He is a former member of the Independent Science Board of the Bay/Delta Authority. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2015, and received the Richard Lyman Award from Stanford University in the same year. In 2020 he was elected as a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. Koseff also served as the Faculty Athletics Representative to the Pac-12 and NCAA for Stanford until July 2024.

  • Robert Kovach

    Robert Kovach

    Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEarthquake seismology, natural hazards, and ancient earthquakes and archaeology

  • Anthony Kovscek

    Anthony Kovscek

    Keleen and Carlton Beal Professor of Petroleum Engineering and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch
    Together with my research group, I develop and apply advanced imaging techniques, experimentation, and models to understand complex multiphase flows of gas, water, and organic phases in natural and manufactured porous media with applications in carbon storage, increased utilization of carbon dioxide for subsurface applications, hydrogen storage, and water reuse. In all of our work, physical observations, obtained mainly from laboratory and field measurements, are interwoven with theory.

    Teaching
    My teaching interests center broadly around education of students to meet the energy challenges that we will face this century. I teach undergraduate courses that examine the interplay of energy use and environmental issues including renewable energy resources and sustainability. At the graduate level, I offer classes on renewable energy processes based on heat and the thermodynamics of hydrocarbon mixtures.

    Professional Activities
    Member, American Geophysical Union, Society of Petroleum Engineers, and the American Chemical Society.

  • Jon Krosnick

    Jon Krosnick

    Frederic O. Glover Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor of Communication and of Political Science, of Environmental Social Sciences and, by courtesy, of Psychology

    BioJon Krosnick is a social psychologist who does research on attitude formation, change, and effects, on the psychology of political behavior, and on survey research methods. He is the Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor of Communication, Political Science, Environmental Social Sciences, and (by courtesy) Psychology. He directs Stanford's Political Psychology Research Group and has directed the Summer Institute in Political Psychology.

    To read reports on Professor Krosnick’s research program exploring public opinion on the environment, visit the American Public Opinion on Climate Change web site (https://climatepublicopinion.stanford.edu/).

    Research Interests
    Author of seven published books and two forthcoming books and more than 190 articles and chapters, Dr. Krosnick conducts research in three primary areas: (1) attitude formation, change, and effects, (2) the psychology of political behavior, and (3) the optimal design of questionnaires used for laboratory experiments and surveys, and survey research methodology more generally.

    His attitude research has focused primarily on the notion of attitude strength, seeking to differentiate attitudes that are firmly crystallized and powerfully influential of thinking and action from attitudes that are flexible and inconsequential. Many of his studies in this area have focused on the amount of personal importance that an individual chooses to attach to an attitude. Dr. Krosnick’s studies have illuminated the origins of attitude importance (e.g., material self-interest and values) and the cognitive and behavioral consequences of importance in regulating attitude impact and attitude change processes.

    Honors
    Winner of the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding research, and the Nevitt Sanford Award from the International Society of Political Psychology, Dr. Krosnick’s scholarship has been recognized by election as a fellow by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Erik Erikson Award for Excellence and Creativity in the Field of Political Psychology from the International Society of Political Psychology, two fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Phillip Brickman Memorial Prize for Research in Social Psychology, and the American Political Science Association’s Best Paper Award.

  • Angelle Desiree LaBeaud

    Angelle Desiree LaBeaud

    Professor of Pediatrics (Infectious Diseases), Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor, by courtesy, of Epidemiology and Population Health and of Environmental Social Sciences

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsArthropod-borne viruses are emerging and re-emerging infections that are spreading throughout the world. Our laboratory investigates the epidemiology of arboviral infections, focusing on the burden of disease and the long-term complications on human health. In particular, Dr. LaBeaud investigates dengue, chikungunya, and Rift Valley fever viruses in Kenya, where outbreaks cause fever, arthritis, retinitis, encephalitis, and hemorrhagic fever. Our main research questions focus on the risk factors for arboviral infections, the development of diagnostic tests that can be administered in the field to quickly determine what kind of arboviral infection a person has, and the genetic and immunologic investigation of why different people respond differently to the same infection. Our long-term goals are to contribute to a deeper understanding of arboviral infections and their long-term health consequences and to optimize control strategies to prevent these emerging infections. Our laboratory also investigates the effects of antenatal and postnatal parasitic infections on vaccine responses, growth, and development of Kenyan children.

    My lab at Stanford supports the field work that is ongoing in Kenya, but we also have several projects that are based locally. We strive to improve diagnostics of arboviral infections and are using Luminex technology to build a new screening assay. We also have created a Luminex based platform to assess vaccine responses against multiple pathogens.

  • Ching-Yao Lai

    Ching-Yao Lai

    Assistant Professor of Geophysics

    BioMy group attacks fundamental questions in fluid dynamics and geophysics by integrating mathematical and machine-learned models with observational data. We use our findings to address challenges facing the world, such as advancing our scientific knowledge of ice dynamics under climate change. The length scale of the systems we are interested in varies broadly from a few microns to thousands of kilometers, because the governing physical principles are often universal across a range of length and time scales. We use mathematical models, simulations, and machine learning to study the complex interactions between fluids and elasticity and their interfacial dynamics, such as multiphase flows, flows in deformable structures, and cracks. We extend our findings to tackle emerging topics in climate science and geophysics, such as understand the missing physics that governs the flow of ice sheets in a warming climate. We welcome collaborations across disciplinary lines, from geophysics, engineering, physics, applied math to computer science, since we believe combining expertise and methodologies across fields is crucial for new discoveries.

  • Sanjay Lall

    Sanjay Lall

    Professor of Electrical Engineering

    BioSanjay Lall is Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Information Systems Laboratory and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. He received a B.A. degree in Mathematics with first-class honors in 1990 and a Ph.D. degree in Engineering in 1995, both from the University of Cambridge, England. His research group focuses on algorithms for control, optimization, and machine learning. Before joining Stanford he was a Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology in the Department of Control and Dynamical Systems, and prior to that he was a NATO Research Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. He was also a visiting scholar at Lund Institute of Technology in the Department of Automatic Control. He has significant industrial experience applying advanced algorithms to problems including satellite systems, advanced audio systems, Formula 1 racing, the America's cup, cloud services monitoring, and integrated circuit diagnostic systems, in addition to several startup companies. Professor Lall has served as Associate Editor for the journal Automatica, on the steering and program committees of several international conferences, and as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation, DARPA, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. He is the author of over 130 peer-refereed publications.

  • Eric Lambin

    Eric Lambin

    George and Setsuko Ishiyama Provostial Professor and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI study human-environment interactions in land systems by linking remote sensing, GIS and socio-economic data. I aim at better understanding causes and impacts of changes in tropical forests, drylands, and farming systems. I currently focus on land use transitions – i.e., the shift from deforestation (or land degradation) to reforestation (or land sparing for nature), – the influence of globalization on land use decisions, and the interactions between public and private governance of land use.

  • Mathieu Lapôtre

    Mathieu Lapôtre

    Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and, by courtesy, of Geophysics and of Civil and Environmental Engineering

    BioProf. Lapôtre leads the Earth & Planetary Surface Processes group. His research focuses on the physics behind sedimentary and geomorphic processes that shape planetary surfaces (including Earth's), and aims to untangle what sedimentary rocks tell us about the past hydrology, climate, and habitability of planets.

  • James Leape

    James Leape

    William and Eva Price Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment

    BioJim Leape serves as co-director of the Center for Ocean Solutions and is the William and Eva Price Senior Fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Through research, writing, and direct engagement with private and public sector leaders, Jim looks at how to drive large-scale systemic shifts to sustainability, with particular interest in expanding private sector leadership on sustainability globally.

    Jim has four decades of conservation experience, spanning a broad range of conservation issues on every continent. From 2005 to 2014, he served as Director General of WWF International and leader of the global WWF Network, which is one of the world’s largest conservation organizations, active in more than 100 countries. In that capacity, he worked with government, business and civil society leaders on a wide range of issues, including climate change, marine conservation, forest protection, water resources management, and sustainability in global commodity markets. Before going to WWF International, Jim directed the conservation and science initiatives of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, a leading philanthropy in the U.S. Previously, he served as executive vice president of WWF-US in Washington, D.C.; as a lawyer for the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, Kenya; as a law professor; and as a litigator for the National Audubon Society and for the U.S. Department of Justice.

    Jim has served on the boards of the Marine Stewardship Council, Mission 2020 and the Luc Hoffmann Institute, and on the Global Future Council for the Food Security and the Environmental Stewards Board of the World Economic Forum. From 2007 to 2017, he was a member of the China Council for International Cooperation in Environment and Development, which advises the Premier of China. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the ClimateWorks Foundation.

    Leape received an A.B. with honors from Harvard College and a J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School.

    Jim serves on the boards of the Marine Stewardship Council, Mission 2020 and the Luc Hoffmann Institute, and on the Global Future Council for the Food Security and the Environmental Stewards Board of the World Economic Forum. From 2007 to 2017, he was a member of the China Council for International Cooperation in Environment and Development, which advises the Premier of China. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the ClimateWorks Foundation.

    Leape received an A.B. with honors from Harvard College and a J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School.

  • Anna Lee

    Anna Lee

    Lecturer

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAnna's research interests are how people learn about and make decisions related to food and waste.

  • Larry John Leifer

    Larry John Leifer

    Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Emeritus

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur "designXlab" at the Stanford Center for Design Research (CDR) has long (30+ years) been focused on Engineering Design Team dynamics at global collaboration scale working with corporate partners in my graduate course ME310ABC. In our most recent studies we have added Neuroscience visualization of brain activity using fMRI and fNIRS. In doing so we have launched "NeuroDesign" as a professional discipline.

  • Michael Lepech

    Michael Lepech

    C. L. Peck, Class of 1906, Professor and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment

    BioUnsustainable energy and material consumption, waste production, and emissions are some of today’s most pressing global concerns. To address these concerns, civil engineers are now designing facilities that, for example, passively generate power, reuse waste, and are carbon neutral. These designs are based foremost on longstanding engineering theory. Yet woven within this basic knowledge must be new science and new technologies, which advance the field of civil engineering to the forefront of sustainability-focused design.

    My research develops fundamental engineering design concepts, models, and tools that are tightly integrated with quantitative sustainability assessment and service life modeling across length scales, from material scales to system scales, and throughout the early design, project engineering, construction, and operation life cycle phases of constructed facilities. My research follows the Sustainable Integrated Materials, Structures, Systems (SIMSS) framework. SIMSS is a tool to guide the multi-scale design of sustainable built environments, including multi-physics modeling informed by infrastructure sensing data and computational learning and feedback algorithms to support advanced digital-twinning of engineered systems. Thus, my research applies SIMMS through two complementary research thrusts; (1) developing high-fidelity quantitative sustainability assessment methods that enable civil engineers to quickly and probabilistically measure sustainability indicators, and (2) creating multi-scale, fundamental engineering tools that integrate with sustainability assessment and facilitate setting and meeting sustainability targets throughout the life cycle of constructed facilities.

    Most recently, my research forms the foundation of the newly created Stanford Center at the Incheon Global Campus (SCIGC) in South Korea, a university-wide research center examining the potential for smart city technologies to enhance the sustainability of urban areas. Located in the smart city of Songdo, Incheon, South Korea, SCIGC is a unique global platform to (i) advance research on the multi-scale design, construction, and operation of sustainable built environments, (ii) demonstrate to cities worldwide the scalable opportunities for new urban technologies (e.g., dense urban sensing networks, dynamic traffic management, autonomous vehicles), and (iii) improve the sustainability and innovative capacity of increasingly smarter cities globally.

    With an engineering background in civil and environmental engineering and material science (BSE, MSE, PhD), and business training in strategy and finance (MBA), I continue to explore to the intersection of entrepreneurship education, innovation capital training, and the potential of startups to more rapidly transfer and scale technologies to solve some of the world's most challenging problems.

  • Andrew Leslie

    Andrew Leslie

    Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am interested in morphological evolution. I approach this broad topic by investigating how interactions among form, function, and environment have influenced evolutionary patterns in plant reproductive structures over million-year time scales. This approach requires synthesizing information from different disciplines, and my work uses approaches from paleontology, biomechanics, phylogenetics, and biogeography.

  • Philip Levis

    Philip Levis

    Professor of Computer Science and of Electrical Engineering

    BioProfessor Levis' research focuses on the design and implementation of efficient software systems for embedded wireless sensor networks; embedded network sensor architecture and design; systems programming and software engineering.

  • Raymond Levitt

    Raymond Levitt

    Kumagai Professor in the School of Engineering, Emeritus

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Levitt founded and directs Stanford’s Global Projects Center (GPC), which conducts research, education and outreach to enhance financing, governance and sustainability of global building and infrastructure projects. Dr. Levitt's research focuses on developing enhanced governance of infrastructure projects procured via Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) delivery, and alternative project delivery approaches for complex buildings like full-service hospitals or data centers.

  • Shanjun Li

    Shanjun Li

    Steven and Roberta Denning Global Sustainability Professor, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

    BioShanjun Li is the Steven and Roberta Denning Global Sustainability Professor and a Senior Fellow at both the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). His research focuses on environmental and energy economics, urban and transportation economics, empirical industrial organization, and the Chinese economy. His recent work examines pressing sustainability challenges and the rapid rise of clean energy industries in China, exploring their global implications to inform evidence-based policymaking.