Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
Showing 1-40 of 40 Results
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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.
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Marvin Browne
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioAmong the many constituents of a plant’s environment, water is critical to the functionality of most of a plant’s physiological processes. Given the uncertainty in global climate change's impact on plant species, my work aims to enhance our understanding of how plant physiological traits inform individual, species-level, and ecosystem responses to water stress. I use plant physiological methods and knowledge along with remote sensing tools to address scaling of variation physiology within and across species.
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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 colonialism, in turn reshaping how people relate to land, substantiate their place on it, and make claims to territory. This is creating new social-ecological 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, climate adaptation, and community-based land stewardship across North America. My areas of research and teaching interest include environmental anthropology, Indigenous environmental sciences/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. -
Christopher Callahan
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioPersonal website (more frequently updated): https://christophercallahan.me
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Jing Cheng
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioPostdoctoral Scholar | climate change impacts and adaption | net-zero energy and food systems | air pollution | CDR |
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Xinyu Dou
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioStanford Energy Fellow
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Dapeng Feng
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioDapeng Feng is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Earth System Science and Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. During his PhD he developed the differentiable hydrologic modeling framework to unify machine learning and physical models for large-scale water cycle simulations and streamflow forecasting. His current research interests focus on systematically integrating AI, physical models, and big earth observations for large-scale geoscientific modeling and knowledge discovery, particularly in characterizing the terrestrial water cycle and its interactions with plant and climate systems.
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Melanie Gittard
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am an applied environmental and development economist studying the impacts of climate change and water pollution in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Emily Gordon
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioPhD, Colorado State University, 2023
MSc, University of Otago, 2020
BSc, University of Otago, 2018 -
Alexander Honeyman
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioMy Ph.D. 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 Colorado (fire / rescue / EMS). My current work involves two major thrusts: 1) I use data science strategies to decipher links between groundwater overuse and groundwater quality in Colorado. 2) I investigate the geochemical character of wildfire smoke by hybridizing analyses of physical samples with various geospatial datasets and atmospheric particle transport models. I love working in environmental systems because they are complex, and offer numerous opportunities to blend the physical and computational sciences.
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Zachary Kaufman
Casual - Other Teaching Staff
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System ScienceBioMy research as a climate scientist seeks to understand the physical processes that shape the polar regions. The high latitudes are undergoing the largest changes on Earth; in recent decades, Arctic temperatures have warmed at twice the global average, while 2023 featured the lowest Antarctic sea-ice extent on record. Policymakers’ ability to manage the consequences of these changes requires improved polar climate predictability. Rapidly declining Arctic Sea ice exposes new economic resources and shipping routes, necessitating a detailed understanding of where and how quickly newly open water will appear. In the Antarctic, the instability-prone West Antarctic Ice Sheet may have large future contributions to sea-level rise, but predicting the timing and magnitude of ice sheet melt requires a better understanding of how Antarctic warming trends will progress. To address these scientific priorities, my research characterizes ocean-ice sheet interactions, ventilation of the deep ocean, and coupled atmosphere-ocean variability, among other phenomena. A common theme across my work is the use of data-driven techniques to reconcile discrepancies between models and observations, identifying key areas for improving future generations of climate models.
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Fa Li
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioMy research investigates greenhouse gases emissions, wildfires/climate extremes, and nature-based solutions by combining data-driven approaches (e.g., physically interpretable AI and causality inference), process-based terrestrial biosphere/Earth system models, and big data (e.g., remote sensing, in-situ measurements).
For example, together with our collaborators at Stanford and beyond, I play a leading role in FLUXNET-CH₄ V2.0, a global network of methane tower measurements, to enhance the monitoring of methane emissions and support Global Carbon Project-Methane Budget. These observations are not only important for carbon science, but also for AI in Earth science because "Data is the foundation of AI"–I believe.
I develop physically interpretable AI, integrating scientific principles to improve reliability, particularly when solving critical challenges such as climate and wildfire prediction. Because "black-box AI" with low "physical interpretability" often concerns me, why? -
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
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.
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Josheena Naggea
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsJosheena's community-engaged research focuses on small-scale fisheries, disaster impacts and recovery, marine protected area management, and the valorization of natural and cultural heritage in ocean governance. She has a keen interest in understanding people-ocean connections and how that influences pro-ecological behavior and local environmental stewardship.
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Alireza Namayandeh
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAlireza Namayandeh’s research focuses on the formation, transformation, and environmental impacts of metal-bearing nanoparticles in soil, water, and air, with a particular emphasis on their role in wildfire-generated pollution. His work investigates how wildfires contribute to the release and transport of toxic metal nanoparticles, assessing their chemical and physical properties and their implications for human health and ecosystem contamination.
His current research, supported by the NSF Earth Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, explores the mechanisms by which biomass burning generates toxic airborne nanoparticles and how soil mineralogy influences their formation. By combining laboratory experiments, synchrotron-based spectroscopy, electron microscopy, and field studies, he aims to better understand the pathways of metal mobilization during wildfires. He is also leading efforts to analyze ash and soil samples from recent wildfires in California, including the Eaton and Palisade fires in Los Angeles, to assess the risks associated with airborne metal nanoparticles.
Beyond wildfire-driven pollution, he is interested in the fundamental geochemistry of nanoparticle formation and transport. His previous work on precursor clusters of iron oxy-hydroxides provided new insights into the formation of metal-bearing nanoparticles and their role in controlling contaminant mobility in the environment. He continues to explore how ultrafine particles interact with toxic metals, organic matter, and microbial communities in both terrestrial and atmospheric systems.
His broader scholarly interests include wildfire geochemistry, atmospheric particulate matter, environmental mineralogy, and the intersection of environmental geochemistry and public health. His goal is to develop a deeper understanding of how natural and anthropogenic processes influence the formation and dispersion of hazardous nanoparticles, ultimately contributing to improved air quality standards, risk assessment models, and environmental policies in wildfire-prone regions. -
Rafael Stern
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioRafael Stern was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is 35 years old, and married to Gal. Rafael has a BSc in Geography from the Geosciences Department of Universidade Federal Fluminense, in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He has a MSc from the Climate and Environment Department of the National Institute of Amazon Research in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, with the supervision of prof. Paulo Artaxo, and he measured the physical and chemical properties of atmospheric particles during forest fires season in the Amazon rainforest. He has a PhD from the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, with the supervision of prof. Dan Yakir, and he used a mobile eddy covariance station to compare the biogeophysical and biogeochemical effects of different ecosystems and of PV fields on drylands.
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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.
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Zhenglin Zhang
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsClimate change mitigation and sustainable nutrient management in agroecosystems
