Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
Showing 1-50 of 162 Results
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Sara Alibakhshi
Affiliate, Earth System Science
BioI recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Helsinki, where I honed my expertise in Geoinformatics and remote sensing. My work focuses on using cutting-edge satellite and airborne sensor data, combined with advanced spatial analysis and machine learning, to better understand and mitigate environmental challenges such as climate change, land-use transformation, and biodiversity decline. Passionate about bridging technology and ecology, I collaborate across disciplines to translate geospatial insights into actionable solutions for sustainable resource management and conservation.
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Kevin Arrigo
Donald and Donald M. Steel Professor of Earth Sciences and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsInvestigates role of ocean biology in gobal carbon and nutrient cycles.
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Ines M. L. Azevedo
Professor of Energy Science Engineering, Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and Professor, by courtesy, of Civil and Environmental Engineering and of Earth System Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProfessor Azevedo is passionate about solving problems that include environmental, technical, economic, and policy issues, where traditional engineering approaches play an important role but cannot provide a complete answer. In particular, she is interested in assessing how energy systems are likely to evolve, which requires comprehensive knowledge of the technologies that can address future energy needs and the decision-making process followed by various agents in the economy.
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Kevin Boyce
Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and, by courtesy, of Earth System Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPaleontology/Geobiology; Fossil record of plant physiology and development; Evolution of terrestrial ecosystems including fungi, animals, and environmental feedbacks with the biota
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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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Jen Burney
Professor of Environmental Social Sciences, of Earth System Science and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
BioJennifer (Jen) Burney is a Professor in Global Environmental Policy and Earth System Science in the Doerr School of Sustainability. Her research focuses on the coupled relationships between climate and food security – measuring air pollutant emissions and concentrations, quantifying the effects of climate and air pollution on land use and food systems, understanding how food production and consumption contribute to climate change, and designing and evaluating technologies and strategies for adaptation and mitigation among the world’s farmers. Her research group combines methods from physics, ecology, statistics, remote sensing, economics, and policy to understand critical scientific uncertainties in this coupled system and to provide evidence for what will – or won’t – work to simultaneously end hunger and stabilize earth’s climate. She earned a PhD in physics in 2007, completed postdoctoral fellowships in both food security and climate science, and was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2011; prior to joining the Doerr School, she served on the faculty at UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
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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. -
Pablo Busch
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioDr. Pablo Busch is an interdisciplinary researcher with training in industrial and environmental engineering, public policy, energy systems, industrial ecology, and statistics. His research broadly focuses on scientific analyses to support a clean energy transition, and to help identify risks to equity and sustainability in the emerging energy transition mineral supply chain. Pablo's main research goal is to conduct scientific analysis to diverse environmental and climate change problems, and to translate key insights from research into a digestible and actionable format for decision-making. His research is fueled by tools from engineering, statistics, geographic information systems, economics and public policy.
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Ken Caldeira
Visiting Scholar, Earth System Science
Affiliate,BioKen Caldeira is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. He is the Coordinator of the Conceptual Investigations Unit of Steve Davis’s Sustainable Solutions Lab. Caldeira is also a Senior Scientist at Gates Ventures.
Prior to working at Gates Ventures, Ken was Senior Scientist at Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology. Preceding that he was in the Energy and Environment Directorate of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He did a postdoc in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State University. He has a PhD and MS from New York University in Atmospheric Sciences, and a BA from Rutgers University where he majored in Philosophy. -
Karen Casciotti
Associate Dean for Facilities and Shared Labs, Professor of Oceans, of Earth System Science and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProfessor in Oceans and ESS, focus on marine chemistry and biogeochemistry.
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Page Chamberlain
Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and of Earth System Science
On Leave from 09/22/2025 To 12/12/2025Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch
I use stable and radiogenic isotopes to understand Earth system history. These studies examine the link between climate, tectonics, biological, and surface processes. Projects include: 1) examining the terrestrial climate history of the Earth focusing on periods of time in the past that had CO 2-levels similar to the present and to future projections; and 2) addressing how the chemical weathering of the Earth's crust affects both the long- and short-term carbon cycle. Field areas for these studies are in the Cascades, Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada, the European Alps, Tibet and the Himalaya and the Southern Alps of New Zealand.
International Collaborations
Much of the research that I do has an international component. Specifically, I have collaborations with: 1) the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Frankfurt Germany as a Humboldt Fellow and 2) the Chinese University of Geosciences in Bejiing China where I collaborate with Professor Yuan Gao.
Teaching
I teach courses at the undergraduate and graduate level in isotope biogeochemistry, Earth system history, and the relationship between climate, surface processes and tectonics.
Professional Activities
Editor American Journal of Science; Co-Director Stanford Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry Laboratory (present);Chair, Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences (2004-07); Co-Director Stanford/USGS SHRIMP Ion microprobe facility (2001-04) -
Shi Chen
Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
Affiliate,BioShi Chen is a postdoctoral fellow co-advised by Prof. Steven Davis and Ken Caldeira. She earned her PhD in Environmental Engineering and pursued postdoctoral research at Tsinghua University in China, and has been a visiting researcher at both Harvard University and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. Her passion lies in crafting innovative strategies for navigating the complexities of achieving a sustainable future. She is an incoming assistant professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).
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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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Steven J. Davis
Professor of Earth System Science, Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and Professor, by courtesy, of Energy Science and Engineering
BioSteve Davis is a highly-cited researcher and expert in earth system science, emissions and energy scenarios, climate impacts and solutions, and corporate climate strategy. He is a Professor of Earth System Science in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and leads the Sustainable Solutions Lab, a research group dedicated to quantifying how different human activities are affecting climate and air quality, how those environmental changes in turn jeopardize human wellbeing, and the relative priority of solutions.
Steve was a Contributing Author of two Working Group III chapters in the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), serves on the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Carbon Project, was the Lead Author of the Mitigation chapter in the U.S. Fifth National Climate Assessment, and is a member of the Technical Council of the Science Based Targets Initiative.
Prior to his science career, Steve worked as a lawyer to venture-backed companies in Silicon Valley, and holds degrees from Stanford University, the University of Virginia School of Law and the University of Florida, where he double-majored in Political Science and Philosophy. -
Giulio De Leo
Professor of Oceans, of Earth System Science, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor, by courtesy of Biology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am a theoretical ecologist mostly interested in investigating factors and processes driving the dynamics of natural and harvested populations and on how to use this knowledge to inform practical management. I have worked broadly on life histories analysis, fishery management, dynamics and control of infectious diseases and environmental impact assessment.
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Prof. Ramit Debnath
Affiliate, Earth System Science
BioDr Ramit Debnath is a University Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the Centre for Human-Inspired AI (CHIA) at the University of Cambridge, UK and a visiting faculty at Caltech.
Ramit is an elected member of the Methods Advisory Group (MAG) of the UK Government. He leads the Collective Intelligence and Design Group and climaTRACES Lab at Cambridge, and the Climate and Social Intelligence Lab at Caltech. His research advances computational social science methodologies for climate and environmental sustainability at urban and global levels. Ramit is particularly interested in understanding social tipping mechanisms and its interactions with global climate action. At Stanford, he is co-leading the Stanford-Cambridge Inclusive Ordering Initiative at the Doerr School of Sustainability.
Dr Debnath has a background in electrical engineering and computational social sciences, with a MPhil and a PhD from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar. -
Anne Dekas
Associate Professor of Earth System Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEnvironmental microbiology, deep-sea microbial ecology, marine biogeochemistry
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Noah Diffenbaugh
Kara J Foundation Professor and Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Noah S. Diffenbaugh is an Editor of the peer-review journal Geophysical Research Letters, and a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is a recipient of the James R. Holton Award from the American Geophysical Union, a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, and a Terman Fellowship from Stanford University. He has also been recognized as a Kavli Fellow by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and as a Google Science Communication Fellow.
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Rodolfo Dirzo
Associate Dean for Integrative Initiatives in Environmental Justice, Bing Prof in Environmental Science, Professor of Earth System Science and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEcological and evolutionary aspects of plant-animal interactions, largely but not exclusively, in tropical forest ecosystems.
Conservation biology in tropical ecosystems.
Studies on biodiversity.
Education, at all levels, on scientific practice, ecology and biodiversity conservation. -
Xinyu Dou
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioStanford Energy Fellow
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Scott Fendorf
Terry Huffington Professor, Senior Associate Dean for Research, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor of Photon Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsSoil and environmental biogeochemistry
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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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Chris Field
Melvin and Joan Lane Professor of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, Director, Woods Institute for the Environment & Professor of Earth System Science, of Biology and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute and at the Precourt Institute
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch
My field is climate-change science, and my research emphasizes human-ecological interactions across many disciplines. Most studies include aspects of ecology, but also aspects of law, sociology, medicine, or engineering. -
Stephanie Fischer
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2022
Ph.D. Minor, Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity
Grad OCT, Hume CenterBioStephanie Fischer (she/her) is a Ph.D. student with the Behavioral Decisions and the Environment group with Dr. Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, and is a Ph.D. minor with the Center for Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity. She is largely interested in community-led solutions that bolster adaptive capacity in the face of acute disasters and chronic climate hazards, and the ways culture and identity play a pivotal role in achieving holistic well-being and transformative climate justice.
Stephanie also holds a B.A. in Music Composition and a B.A. in Earth Systems (Human Environmental Systems) from Stanford University. -
Christopher Francis
Professor of Earth System Science, of Oceans and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMicrobial cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and metals in the environment; molecular geomicrobiology; marine microbiology; microbial diversity; meta-omics
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TJ Francisco
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2023
BioI primarily work with reptiles and amphibians in forests and agroecological landscapes to investigate the consequences of land-use decisions on biodiversity, species interactions, and invasions. In Costa Rica, I research the effects of strategically diversifying oil palm farms on herpetofauna diversity and habitat quality. I am interested in the interconnections between political ecology, food sovereignty, and wildlife conservation.
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Tadashi Fukami
Professor of Biology and of Earth System Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEcological and evolutionary community assembly, with emphasis on understanding historical contingency in community structure, ecosystem functioning, biological invasion and ecological restoration, using experimental, theoretical, and comparative methods involving bacteria, protists, fungi, plants, and animals.
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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.
