Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability


Showing 1-48 of 48 Results

  • Areidy Aracely Beltran-Peña

    Areidy Aracely Beltran-Peña

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioAreidy Beltran-Peña is an Earth System Scientist and a Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellow. She leverages integrated assessment and Earth system models to investigate the global and regional impacts of climate change on water resources available for natural and human consumption. Overall, her research sheds light on the intricate dynamics impacting water and food security amid a changing climate, highlighting the importance of both global and regional analyses.

  • Steffen Buessecker

    Steffen Buessecker

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research interests revolve around the co-evolution of microbial life and Earth processes, the relation of these to the planetary climate, as well as astrobiology. In the spirit of SDSS, I am also passionate about seeking solutions for global climate change by focusing on greenhouse gas removal. I see high potential in the carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide consumption by enhanced mineral-microbial catalysis – processes that have been controlling gas fluxes since billions of years.

  • Paul Berne Burow

    Paul Berne Burow

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioI am a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Earth System Science at Stanford University. I am an interdisciplinary social-environmental scientist studying how human communities are impacted by environmental change. My work examines the cultural dynamics of environmental change in North America across scales using mixed methods from ethnography and archival research to field ecology and spatial analysis. My postdoctoral project explores the social dimensions and institutional effectiveness of collaborative forest stewardship with federal agencies and Native Nations in California.

    My previous work examined the social and cultural dimensions of environmental change in the North America's Great Basin. Based on thirty-six months of field-based ethnographic and historical research in California and Nevada, it investigated the cultural politics of land and its stewardship in dryland forest and shrub steppe ecosystems as it intersected with a changing climate, land use histories, and environmental governance regimes. Landscapes are undergoing material transformation due to climate change, land use practices, and settler colonialism, in turn reshaping how people relate to land, substantiate their place on it, and make claims to territory. This is creating new socioecological configurations of people, land, and place I call ecologies of belonging, the subject of my current book manuscript.

    Broadly, my research program addresses the sociocultural dimensions of climate and land use change, Indigenous environmental justice, and rural social inequality across North America. My areas of research and teaching interest include environmental anthropology, Indigenous environmental studies, ethnoecology, and human-environment geography. I am also engaged in community-based participatory research projects with Tribal Nations to expand Indigenous-led land stewardship and protect cultural landscapes from degradation for the benefit of future generations.

  • Anchal Garg

    Anchal Garg

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioShe is an environmental researcher working on the negative implications of air pollution on human health and climate change. She has worked on monitoring, mapping, emission inventory, and identifying health hazards of Volatile Organic Compounds, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons, and Particulate Matter present in the air. Anchal conducted extensive fieldwork, surveys, and cross-sectional studies to identify air quality and health-related data. Her current project is modeling and measuring the health consequences of indoor air pollutants formed during the combustion of stove gas in California.

  • Emily Gordon

    Emily Gordon

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioPhD, Colorado State University, 2023
    MSc, University of Otago, 2020
    BSc, University of Otago, 2018

  • Johanna Hedlund

    Johanna Hedlund

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioJohanna Hedlund is a Wallenberg postdoctoral researcher focusing broadly on climate and sustainable development issues in the science and policy interface, mainly using advanced network methods. Her research interests include environmental policy, transnational climate risk, climate adaptation, international cooperation and network science. Her postdoctoral research focuses specifically on how climate-induced extreme events may affect the global distribution of risk via international food trade.

    Prior to joining Stanford, Johanna worked for the Stockholm Environment Institute, where she developed the Transnational Climate Impact Index as a quantification of countries’ exposure to the globalized effects of climate change impacts, and as a postdoctoral scholar for 4TU.Centre for Resilience Engineering at the University of Twente. She received her PhD in sustainable development from Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden.

  • Alexander Honeyman

    Alexander Honeyman

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioMy Ph.D. work in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines was concerned with the biogeochemistry and recovery of post-wildfire soils. I work at the intersections of data science, field work, laboratory experimentation, biogeochemistry, and microbial ecology. I was exposed to the issue of wildland fire through 10 years of experience as a volunteer firefighter / EMT in Boulder County, Colorado (fire / rescue / EMS). I love working on soils because they are a fascinating interface between basic and applied science with immediate relevance to sustainability. Recreationally, I enjoy cycling and rock climbing but anything outside is fantastic.

  • Zachary Kaufman

    Zachary Kaufman

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioI am broadly interested in how Earth’s atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere interact to shape the spatial pattern of climate change. I primarily develop data-driven, statistical approaches to diagnose climate change mechanisms in state-of-the-art earth system models. At Stanford, I use these tools to evaluate the Southern Ocean’s complex relationship with Antarctic ice-sheet mass balance. This work addresses key sources of uncertainty in current climate change projections, supporting improved climate impact assessments and a better-informed societal response to future changes. I recently completed my PhD in the Feldl Lab at University of California, Santa Cruz, where I used a causal inference approach to investigate the role of sea ice in polar climate change. Outside the lab, I enjoy mountain biking, skiing, cooking, and live music.

  • Fa Li

    Fa Li

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioMy research combines advanced data-driven approaches (e.g., GeoAI and causality inference), process-based terrestrial biosphere/Earth system models, and big datasets and techniques of remote sensing, in-situ measurements, geographical information science (GIS), and high-performance computing, to investigate critical processes related to environment/Earth systems, human activities, and their interactions in the context of climate change, such as natural- or human-caused hazards/disturbances under climate change, greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., methane emissions) and climate change mitigation, and terrestrial biosphere processes affecting climate change and sustainability.

  • Mengze Li

    Mengze Li

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    Current Research and Scholarly Interestsatmospheric gases: trends and emissions, such as methane, volatile organic compounds.
    atmospheric observations: ground, airborne, satellite remote sensing.
    atmospheric measurement techniques.
    atmospheric modeling.
    indoor air chemistry and human emissions.
    climate change.

  • Zhi Li

    Zhi Li

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioZhi “Allen” Li is the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Dean’s Postdoc Fellow. He studies surface water across scales, both spatially (local, continental, and global) and temporally (Hydrology, Hydrometeorology, and Hydroclimatology). His research focuses on flood prediction and monitoring by leveraging Remote Sensing platforms and Hydrologic-Hydraulic coupled models. He devotes himself to improving flood monitoring tools to deliver accurate and timely information for the community, especially under-represented communities.

  • Laura Mansfield

    Laura Mansfield

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioI am interested in how machine learning and Bayesian statistics can assist our understanding and prediction of the climate and weather. My current research focuses on improving gravity wave parameterizations in atmospheric circulation models, which are necessary to capture the subgrid-scale gravity waves that influence the middle atmosphere dynamics. Machine learning can be used to either improve existing physics-based parameterizations, i.e. through calibration, or to replace these entirely with novel machine learning alternatives. I work on both of these approaches and am particularly interested in exploring uncertainties arising from parameterizations.

    Previously, I completed my PhD at the University of Reading, which focused on emulating climate models to estimate the surface temperature response to changes in anthropogenic forcings, including both long-lived greenhouse gases and short-lived aerosol pollutants. Prior to this, I completed the Mathematics of Planet Earth MRes at University of Reading, after coming from an undergraduate degree in Physics at Imperial College London. Outside of work, my interests include cycling, running and being outdoors in California.

  • Alireza Namayandeh

    Alireza Namayandeh

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Namayandeh's research interests are centered around three primary areas: 1) the formation and transformation of natural nanoparticles, 2) their interaction with contaminants and nutrients in the Earth's surface environment, and 3) how these interactions impact human health. He is currently studying the generation of toxic metals in soils at extremely high temperatures. He is also involved in solving global and environmental health problems, particularly in low-income countries. He is working on a project in Bangladesh focusing on lead exposure.

    He is also interested to integrate environmental justice into his research. He conducts Eco-theater workshops at Stanford, in which participants create performing arts about the social aspects of California wildfires, including the impact on underrepresented groups such as inmate firefighters.

  • Minghao Qiu

    Minghao Qiu

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioI am a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, working with Marshall Burke as a part of the ECHO (Environmental Change and Human Outcomes) Lab. My research interest is in environmental and energy policies with a global focus on issues involving air pollution, climate change and energy systems. I use causal inference, machine learning, and atmospheric chemistry modeling to study the sustainability challenges at the intersection of energy, pollution and climate using real-world data.

    I received my PhD degree from MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society on September 2021, advised by Noelle Selin. I also worked closely with my committee members: Valerie Karplus, Cory Zigler and Colette Heald. I received bachelor degrees in environmental sciences and economics from Peking University in Beijing.

  • Luwen Wan

    Luwen Wan

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioLuwen is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, working with Dr. Kate Maher, Professor at Stanford University in the Department of Earth System Science. Her postdoctoral research focuses on developing tools for tracking the recovery and activity of the North American beaver from a computer version and evaluating beaver as a tool for fostering sustainable waterways. She received her Ph.D. in Earth and Environmental Science from Michigan State University, where she worked on nutrient transport modeling across the Great Lakes Basin and agricultural tile drainage mapping across the US Midwest region.

  • Philip Womble

    Philip Womble

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioPhilip Womble is an attorney and a hydrologist specializing in water policy and water markets. He is a legal/postdoctoral fellow with the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. Philip received his Ph.D. in Environment and Resources from Stanford and his J.D. from Stanford Law School, where his research evaluated optimal environmental water rights marketing in the Upper Colorado River Basin, barriers to water marketing in the state of Colorado, and Native American groundwater claims across the western United States. His work has been published in journals such as Science, Water Resources Research, and the Harvard Environmental Law Review. During graduate school, Philip worked for the Special Master in the U.S. Supreme Court interstate water dispute Montana v. Wyoming, The Nature Conservancy's Colorado River Program, and a water law firm. Before graduate school, he worked for the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, DC, where he analyzed the most established market for freshwater ecosystem services in the United States – wetland and stream compensatory mitigation under the Clean Water Act. Philip grew up in North Carolina, where he received his B.S. in Environmental Sciences from UNC-Chapel Hill.

  • Jessica Yu

    Jessica Yu

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioJessica Yu joined the Climate and Energy Policy Program (CEPP) and the Woods Institute for the Environment as a Postdoctoral Fellow in September 2022. Her current research focuses on the development of generalized public health guidance and best practices for protecting vulnerable populations from the health impacts of wildfire smoke. Working within an interdisciplinary team at CEPP, her goal is to continue applying and expanding her scientific skills to address the emerging threats of wildfire and other climate change-related policy challenges in California and beyond.

    Prior to joining Stanford, she completed her PhD in Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia and an MSc in Global Health at McMaster University, where she worked on occupational and environmental health research with slum and mining communities in India and South Africa. Beyond academia, she's interested in learning how policy, technology, and social entrepreneurship can be leveraged to address inequalities in global environmental health and devise pro-equity and community-level solutions.

  • Xueying Yu

    Xueying Yu

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioMy research interests include atmospheric chemistry, greenhouse gas emissions, satellite remote sensing retrievals, and carbon mitigation. I use inverse modeling and other data-driven approaches to address the above issues across multiple scales, in particular, to quantify methane emissions from point source level to the global budget.