Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability


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  • 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.

  • Pamela Matson

    Pamela Matson

    Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute, Emerita

    BioPAMELA MATSON is an interdisciplinary sustainability scientist, academic leader, and organizational strategist. She served as dean of Stanford University’s School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences from 2002-2017, building interdisciplinary departments and educational programs focused on resources, environment and sustainability, as well as co-leading university-wide interdisciplinary initiatives. In her current role as the Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies and Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment, she leads the graduate program on Sustainability Science and Practice. Her research addresses a range of environment and sustainability issues, including sustainability of agricultural systems, vulnerability and resilience of particular people and places to climate change, and characteristics of science that can contribute to sustainability transitions at scale.

    Dr. Matson serves as chair of the board of the World Wildlife Fund-US and as a board member of the World Wildlife Fund-International and several university advisory boards. She served on the US National Academy of Science Board on Sustainable Development and co-wrote the National Research Council’s volume Our Common Journey: A transition toward sustainability (1999); she also led the NRC committee on America’s Climate Choices: Advancing the Science of Climate Change. She was the founding chair of the National Academies Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability, and founding editor for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources. She is a past President of the Ecological Society of America. Her recent publications (among around 200) include Seeds of Sustainability: Lessons from the Birthplace of the Green Revolution (2012) and Pursuing Sustainability (2016).

    Pam is an elected member of the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a AAAS Fellow. She received a MacArthur Foundation Award, contributed to the award of the Nobel Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, among other awards and recognitions, and is an Einstein Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

    Dr. Matson holds a Bachelor of Science degree with double majors in Biology and Literature from the University of Wisconsin (Eau Claire), a Master degree in Environmental Science and Policy from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Doctorate in Forest Ecology from Oregon State University, and honorary doctorates from Princeton, McGill and Arizona State Universities. She spent ten years as a research scientist with NASA-Ames Research Center before moving to a professorship at the University of California Berkeley and, in 1997, to Stanford University.