Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
Showing 21-40 of 62 Results
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Kabir Peay
Senior Associate Dean for Education, Director of the Earth Systems Program, Professor of Biology, of Earth System Science and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur lab studies the ecological processes that structure natural communities and the links between community structure and the cycling of nutrients and energy through ecosystems. We focus primarily on fungi, as these organisms are incredibly diverse and are the primary agents of carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. By working across multiple scales we hope to build a 'roots-to-biomes' understanding of plant-microbe symbiosis.
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Janis C Pepper
Affiliate, Precourt Institute Affiliates
BioJan Pepper has more than 30 years of experience in the energy and utility industry, with a legacy of industry-leading innovations. Most recently, from 2016 to 2023, she was the founding Chief Executive Officer of Peninsula Clean Energy, the community choice energy program serving the unincorporated county and all 20 cities in San Mateo County, as well as the City of Los Banos. Under Jan’s leadership, Peninsula Clean Energy has one of the cleanest electricity portfolios in the industry, delivering 100% clean electricity, and at a lower cost than the incumbent utility. During Jan’s tenure, she advanced the forward-looking goal of delivering 100% renewable energy on a 24/7 basis at no additional cost.
Over the course of her career, Jan has founded four energy-related start-ups. She is a pioneer and innovator in industry. At APX, she developed and implemented the first use of renewable energy credits, which now serve as the standard currency for trading and tracking renewable power. At Clean Power Markets, her company designed and implemented the successful Solar Renewable Energy Credit (SREC) program for the State of New Jersey.
In 2017, the U.S. EPA and the Center for Resource Solutions honored her as the Green Power Leader of the Year. Jan served eight years on the Los Altos City Council and was Mayor in 2015 and 2020. She served on the Board of Directors of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District from 2013 to February 2017. Jan is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Precourt Institute for Energy in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and co-teaches a course on energy during the fall quarter. She has a BS in civil engineering and an MBA, both from Stanford University. She is the recipient of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Distinguished Alumni Award for 2025. -
Charlotte Pera
Executive Director, Sustainability Accelerator
BioCharlotte Pera has worked for more than 30 years in clean energy, climate change, and philanthropy. In 2023 she was named one of the 50 most powerful women in U.S. philanthropy by Inside Philanthropy magazine. In July 2024, she became the first Executive Director of the Sustainability Accelerator at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Previously, she served as Vice President and Deputy CEO at the Bezos Earth Fund, a philanthropic organization created by Jeff Bezos that is spending $10 billion this decade to address climate change and protect and restore nature. Before joining the Earth Fund, Charlotte served for nearly nine years as President & CEO of the ClimateWorks Foundation, a leading philanthropic organization that works globally to advance climate solutions through intelligence services, convening, and grantmaking. Earlier in her career, Charlotte advanced clean energy technology and policy in the U.S. and China at the Energy Foundation and at engineering consulting firm Acurex.
Charlotte serves on the advisory board of the 100X Impact Accelerator at the London School of Economics, the governing board of the International Council for Clean Transportation, and the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Philanthropy for Climate and Nature. She is a Senior Fellow at the Bezos Earth Fund and a Senior Fellow with the Mission Possible Partnership. She holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. -
Blas L. Pérez Henríquez
Senior Research Scholar
BioBlas L. Pérez Henríquez founded and serves as Director of the California-Global Energy, Water & Infrastructure Innovation Initiative at Stanford University, sponsored by the Bill Lane Center for the American West, where he is a Senior Research Scholar focusing on regional resource-efficient economic development opportunities. His research and teaching centers on policy analysis to advance clean innovation through novel technological, business, policy, and social solutions for a new clean economy. He directs the Local Governance Summer Institute @ Stanford (LGSI) and its international version the Smart City: Policy, Strategy and Innovation Institute @ Stanford. He also leads the Stanford | Mexico Clean Economy 2050 project.
He has served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Engineering and Sciences of the Technological Institute of Superior Studies of Monterrey (ITESM) in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in London, United Kingdom, and as Guest Professor at the Centre of Economics Research and Teaching (CIDE) in Mexico City, Mexico.
He is the author of “Environmental Commodities and Emissions Trading: Towards a Low Carbon Future,” Resources for the Future – RFF Press/Routledge, Washington, DC (2013) and co-editor of “Carbon Governance, Climate Change and Business Transformation,” Routledge Advances in Climate Change Research, Taylor & Francis Group, Oxford, UK (2015). He also co-edited the book "High-Speed Rail and Sustainability, Decision-making and the political economy of investment," Routlege Explorations in Environmental Studies, Taylor & Francis Group, Oxford, UK (2017). He has written on public-private environmental and energy collaboration in Silicon Valley, water-energy nexus, sustainable transportation and on the use of information technology to support environmental markets and smart policymaking.His most recent publication is the chapter on Environmental Public Policy in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science (2025) and has been a contributing author to reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations (UN).
Pérez Henríquez is a member of the Distinguished Advisory Group of the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets (IC-VCM), derived from the work of the UN Carney Taskforce for Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets (TSVCM) where he served as Member of the Board of Advisors. He was a member of the Mexico – United States Entrepreneurship & Innovation Council (MUSEIC), created through the High-Level Economic Dialogue between the presidents of the United States and Mexico. He served as the U.S. Co-chair of the MUSEIC Energy & Sustainability Subcommittee. Pérez Henríquez is also on the International Advisory Board of Public Administration & Policy: An Asia-Pacific Journal. From 2002 to 2015, he directed UC Berkeley’s Center for Environmental Public Policy which he had founded, and was a faculty member of the Goldman School of Public Policy. He has served as an ex-officio member of the Goldman School advisory board (2002 -2012), and as a Quarterly Chair of the Commonwealth Club of California, the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum.
Pérez Henríquez holds a Masters and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from UC Berkeley, a law degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), a diploma in Public Policy from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM), and a certificate in Compared Environmental US – EU Law & Policy from Indiana University, Leiden & Rotterdam Universities. -
Eliane Petersohn
Ph.D. Student in Geological Sciences, admitted Autumn 2022
BioI grew up in Curitiba, a city in southern Brazil, and, moved to Rio de Janeiro to join the Brazilian National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP) years ago.
I have a strong grasp of the oil and gas industry, where I have been working for more than 15 years. I have a bachelor’s and master's degree in geology from the Federal University of Parana, Brazil and, I have become a public servant of the ANP, where I have held different technical and managerial positions. I spent these past 15 years working on the ANP’s large-scale strategic projects, conducting a geological evaluation for Brazil’s bidding rounds, and developing a multiyear geological and geophysical data acquisition plan for the Agency. I was also responsible for coordinating the first phase of the onerous assignment process, which authorized the Brazilian Government to onerously assign to NOC Petrobras up to 5 billion barrels of oil. I have also been directly involved in the location of two wells, which discovered two of the country's largest oil fields (Buzios and Mero fields). As a geologist researcher, my main objective aims at acquiring capabilities and developing the knowledge required to manage reservoirs to maximize oil recovery and extend the lifespan of oil fields as well as acquire a solid understanding of oil reservoir management to bring innovative knowledge to Brazil and help create guidelines to monitor oil field development and production in my country. -
Dmitri Petrov
Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEvolution of genomes and population genomics of adaptation and variation
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Allison Phillips
Managing Director, Human and Planetary Health
Current Role at StanfordManaging Director, Center for Human and Planetary Health, Woods Institute for the Environment
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Jack Pink
Postdoctoral Scholar, Environmental Social Sciences
BioI am primarily a marine researcher; my PhD is in maritime archaeology specifically focusing on the archaeology of ships. I have been fascinated by the sea and by shipwrecks since reading Jacques Cousteau's The Silent World as a child. The combination of diving and archaeology seemed to me then, and still seems to me now, an unusually fortunate way to make a living.
I read Archaeology and then Maritime Archaeology at the University of Southampton. I then spent two years as Assistant Rural Surveyor at the National Trust's Lanhydrock estate in Cornwall. Whilst that might look like a tangent (and it felt like it at the time) it was an experience that proved more formative than I had anticipated. My responsibilities covered a substantial portion of the Trust's Cornish portfolio, including areas of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape UNESCO World Heritage Site. Managing working harbours and conservation sites in an operational context, answerable to communities as much as to institutional objectives, gave me an understanding of coastal and marine heritage that you frankly cannot get as an academic.
I completed my PhD in 2023, under the supervision of Professor Jon Adams and Dr Julian Whitewright. I examined an assemblage of two hundred merchant vessels through the integration of archaeological remains and historical records, using this dataset to explore the impact of changing systems within the British Empire on merchant shipping and the development of shipbuilding technologies across the nineteenth century. During and around this period I worked to build the practical experience that underpins good maritime archaeology. Underwater, this took me to Roman harbour sites and anchorages in Lebanon (at Anfeh, Batroun, and Tyre) to an underwater excavation in Kalmar, Sweden, to survey projects across the British Isles from the Isle of Lewis to the Pembrokeshire coast, and to geophysical work in Uruguay. On land I directed and contributed to geophysical surveys across Europe, including at Ephesus in Turkey and at a British Museum excavation of an Indo-Roman trade site in northwest India. The range of these projects was deliberate: I was trying to become the kind of archaeologist who could work anywhere and with anything, and fieldwork in different countries and conditions is the only reliable way to do that. Something worked because I found myself being consulted on the archaeological standards for the wreck of Shackleton's Endurance following its discovery in 2022.
A period at Historic England followed, first as Senior Policy Advisor for Underwater Cultural Heritage where I supported the development of government legislation and prepared guidance on the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage. I moved to Technical Manager of the Marine Data Exchange Heritage Accelerator, where I led a team integrating offshore heritage data from commercial contractors and wind farm corporations into the National Marine Heritage Record. This work required collaborating with the Crown Estate, DCMS, and DEFRA, and gave me an understanding of how the marine sector operates commercially that sits alongside but distinct from my research background.
I joined Stanford in September 2025 as a Postdoctoral Scholar holding a joint appointment between the Stanford Robotics Center and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. At the Robotics Center I manage the Oceans Flagship, a programme developing next-generation remotely operated vehicle capabilities for scientific discovery at depth, working with Professor Oussama Khatib and Dr. Steve Cousins. In parallel, I work with Dr. Krish Seetah on research into the environmental impacts of shipwrecks, exploring the interactions between anthropogenic material and the marine ecosystem within the developing field of Maritime Heritage Ecology.
