Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
Showing 1-55 of 55 Results
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Nina Berlin Rubin
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2019
BioNina Berlin Rubin is a 4th year PhD candidate in Earth System Science. Nina's research focuses on human behavior and decision-making in the face of acute climate extremes such as wildfire, wildfire smoke, and hurricanes.
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Malory Brown
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2017
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI study sterol side chain alkylation via sterol methyltransferases (SMTs), particularly in sponges and their bacterial symbionts. I aim to identify and characterize SMTs necessary for the biosynthesis of side-chain alkylated sterols in the sponge holobiont to improve our interpretation of unusual sterane biomarkers currently used to indicate demosponges, some of Earth’s earliest animals.
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Adam Burnett
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Summer 2019
BioI grew up in Westmoreland, New Hampshire, and graduated from Dartmouth College in 2018 with an undergraduate degree in physics. I am broadly interested in atmospheric dynamics, idealized modeling, and climate change. My current research uses aquaplanet simulations to explore what factors determine global tropical cyclone frequency. My hobbies include hiking, birdwatching, and playing the piano.
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Caroline Alexa Famiglietti
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2018
BioCaroline Famiglietti is a PhD candidate working with Prof. Alexandra Konings. She studies the terrestrial carbon cycle, focusing on understanding and reducing uncertainties in model projections of its behavior. In 2017, Caroline graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with a B.S. in Applied Mathematics and a minor in Geography/Environmental Studies. Her prior research experience includes work in the Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems group at NASA JPL from 2017-2018 and in the UC Berkeley Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering in 2016.
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Stephanie Fischer
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2022
BioStephanie Fischer is a Ph.D. student with the Behavioral Decisions and the Environment group with Dr. Gabrielle Wong-Parodi. She holds a B.S. in Earth Systems and B.A. in Music Composition from Stanford University. She is interested in community-led solutions that help build resilience and environmental justice in the face of natural hazards and disasters, and identifies institutions and interventions that may support and scale these solutions. She is also interested in the ways culture, identity, language and place are important to develop effective messaging during emergency situations.
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Anna Gomes
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2020
BioMy main interests lie within anthropogenic climate change, environmental science, and agriculture. The complex system dynamics and interconnections between agriculture and the environment including nutrient cycling, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions are a few of the most critical challenges for today's soil scientists. After completing a master’s degree in Sustainability Science and Environmental Studies at Lund University in Sweden, researching farmer adoption of practices which mitigate GHGs from arable soils in the Netherlands at Wageningen University, I started a PhD in Earth System Science at Stanford University, aiming to focus on soil and environmental biogeochemistry. In parallel to my work in academia, I have been working on a start-up to address food waste and food insecurity in CA (Ugly Food Market), in addition to being a team member on several projects including a sharing library (Circle Centre), a soil science educational platform (Soil Life), and other sustainability related initiatives.
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Andrew Hennig
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2016
BioAntarctic ice sheet, both of which have exhibited significant mass loss over the past few decades. If the two ice sheets were to fully collapse, they could be responsible for up to 15m of global sea level rise (roughly equal parts from both). This sea level rise would not only pose serious problems for coastal settlements, but cause serious changes to ecosystems, and could profoundly alter the Earth’s ocean circulation.
Current estimates of the mass balance for ice sheets are based primarily on satellite data. This data has become more accurate and more available than ever before, since the 1990s. While estimates can be provided by satellite data, satellites are limited by virtue of the fact that they can only evaluate the surface of the ice shelf. Recent research has shown that a significant amount of the mass loss from the West Antarctic ice sheet is happening underwater, along grounding lines, where deep waters, warmed by global warming, enter the area underneath the ice shelf, and melt the shelves from the bottom. This not only results in mass loss directly, but increases calving of glaciers into the ocean, further accelerating their loss. This melting, below the surface of the ice shelves, cannot be estimated by satellites.
To get a better understanding of the impact of warmer deep waters on glacial retreat in Western Antarctica, we need to measure the melt more directly. Using highly precise measurements of salinity and isotopic composition of seawater in coastal regions of Western Antarctica, we can estimate the amount of glacial meltwater present in the oceanic adjacent to ice sheets. Gaining a greater understanding of the rates and locations of West Antarctic melting will be crucial to developing our understanding of future sea level rise, and other wider impacts. -
Natan Holtzman
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2018
BioNatan Holtzman is a fourth-year PhD student in the Earth System Science department working with Prof. Alexandra Konings. He uses remote sensing and modeling to study how water moves between the atmosphere, plants, and soil. Natan graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016 with a B.S. with honors in Geological Sciences and minors in Mathematics and Biology.
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Elizabeth Johnston
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2017
BioElizabeth (she/her) is a PhD Candidate in Earth System Science at the Doerr School of Sustainability. Her research investigates the coupled human-natural system by quantifying the effects of climate and land use on surface processes, with particular emphasis on cascading disasters. The goal of this work is to inform adaptation efforts that enhance human and ecosystem well-being, while reducing shared socioeconomic outcomes and disparities.
Elizabeth holds an MS in Marine Science from the University of San Diego and a BS in Earth and Environmental Science from Furman University. In addition to academic research and teaching experience, she previously served as an Energy Policy Analyst in San Diego, California. -
Colette Kelly
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Summer 2017
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMarine nitrogen biogeochemistry: field studies, isotope analysis, and vertical modeling of nitrous oxide production, consumption, and flux in the eastern tropical North Pacific Ocean.
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Jack Lamb
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2021
BioJack Lamb is a PhD student working under Professor Alison Hoyt in the Earth System Science department. He is interested in developing low-cost instrumentation networks for effective ground-truthing and upscaling of satellite imagery.
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Stephanie M. Lim
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2019
BioI am a biological oceanographer studying the response of ice algae, phytoplankton, and biogeochemical cycles to climate change in the polar oceans.
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Amina Ly
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2018
BioAmina is a PhD student in the Earth Systems Science Department at Stanford University. Her work is primarily focused on understanding climate change risks, and the impacts of extreme temperatures on human systems. Her current work explores the influence of extreme heat events on small-scale mobility patterns, as well as global mapping projects of protected mountainous biodiversity hotspots
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Emily R. Paris
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2020
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDid life exist on Mars? My research addresses the salinity limits of microbial life in extreme environments on Earth to determine how and where to look for life on other planets. As a member of the NASA-funded Oceans Across Space and Time Team (OAST), I am targeting three hypersaline brine ecosystems: solar salterns (San Diego, CA), acidic brines (Western Australia), and deep hypersaline anoxic basins (Gulf of Mexico). By analyzing how microbial metabolism changes with salinity and additional environmental extremes (low pH, high pressure, etc.) we can constrain how the environment impacts global biogeochemical cycling on Earth and beyond.
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Zach Perzan
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2017
BioI’m currently a PhD candidate in Earth System Science at Stanford University. I use modern data science techniques to better understand the environmental processes affecting water quality.
This broad topic includes research projects in several different areas:
1. Building a data-driven water quality model that can make predictions in real time based on in situ sensor observations
2. Understanding seasonal contaminant cycling in a uranium-contaminated floodplain in Wyoming
3. Modeling the impact of managed aquifer recharge on groundwater quality in California’s Central Valley
4. Analyzing the financial cost of EPA drinking water quality violations through 10+ years of consumer purchasing data -
Trent Robinett
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2021
BioTrent is first year Ph.D. student working with Prof. Alexandra Konings in the Earth System Science department. He is interested in using remote sensing data to better understand the role of plant water hydraulics in determining terrestrial vegetation's response to climate change. Trent graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2021 with a B.S. in Environmental Sciences and a minor in Catholic Social Tradition.
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D. Brian Rogers
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2020
Masters Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2022BioBrian is a third-year doctoral student in Earth System Science working with Dr. Kate Maher. Brian is interested in integrating field data, numerical models and data science to link hydrological and biogeochemical processes in surface and subsurface systems.
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Benjamin Shapero
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2020
BioI am a geomicrobiologist and am broadly interested in the connections between protein biochemistry, environmental microbiology, and biogeochemistry. I hail from the surf town of Encinitas near San Diego. I completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Southern California (USC), where I majored in both Biological Sciences and Classical Saxophone Performance. At USC I volunteered in a cellular and molecular neuroscience lab, and it was there that I discovered my fascination with proteins. After graduation, I worked in a vaccine design lab at Scripps Research. This research fostered my growing fascination with protein biochemistry and further exposed me to the realm of microbiology. I have since followed my interests in proteins and microbiology, along with my longstanding passion for climate science, to the field of geomicrobiology. I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in geomicrobiology at Stanford University in the Earth System Science department.
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Hanif Sulaiman
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2022
BioI'm interested in the marine nitrogen cycle, particularly in nitrous oxide (N2O), a potent greenhouse gas that plays a key role in stratospheric ozone destruction. I'm focused on delineating nitrous oxide's accumulation (production-consumption) pathways in various oceanographic regions.
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Emma Velterop
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Spring 2021
BioI am exploring the relationship between housing quality and climate vulnerability, along with associated risk perceptions and protective behaviors. I approach this problem by blending theory and practice from the social sciences—through qualitative interview methods and quantitative survey methods—and computer sciences—through satellite image analysis using machine learning—with community engagement and knowledge from the natural sciences and civil engineering. I focus on the San Francisco Bay Area, and am involved with the Stanford Future Bay Initiative (SFBI).
I hold an M.S. in Geophysics (Stanford, 2020) and an M.Eng. in Civil Engineering (UCL, 2016). Before coming to Stanford and being introduced to community engaged research, my research interests were focused on Earth observation technologies and their use for improving life on Earth, and I worked on this at various organizations around the world. -
Marius von Essen
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2018
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEnvironmental governance of land use in the tropics with a focus on jurisdictional approaches to sustainable resource use.
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Jeff Wen
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2019
BioJeff Wen is a PhD student in the Department of Earth System Science. His research interests are broadly focused on applying machine learning to understand the social impacts of climate change and make decisions under climate uncertainty. He was previously an Assembly Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center and MIT Media Lab studying the governance and ethics of AI and formerly a data scientist at Tesla. Jeff holds a Bachelors in Economics from Wharton and a Masters in Environmental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.
