Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability


Showing 21-40 of 46 Results

  • Rob Jackson

    Rob Jackson

    Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Precourt Institute for Energy

    BioRob Jackson and his lab examine the many ways people affect the Earth. They seek basic scientific knowledge and use it to help shape policies and reduce the environmental footprint of global warming, energy extraction, and other issues. They're currently examining the effects of climate change and droughts on forest mortality and grassland ecosystems. They are also working to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the Global Carbon Project (globalcarbonproject.org), which Jackson chairs; examples of new research Rob leads include establishing a global network of methane tower measurements at more than 80 sites worldwide and measuring and reducing methane emissions from oil and gas wells, city streets, and homes and buildings.

    As an author and photographer, Rob has published a trade book about the environment (The Earth Remains Forever, University of Texas Press), two books of children’s poems, Animal Mischief and Weekend Mischief (Highlights Magazine and Boyds Mills Press), and recent or forthcoming poems in the journals Southwest Review, Cortland Review, Cold Mountain Review, Atlanta Review, LitHub, and more. His photographs have appeared in many media outlets, including the NY Times, Washington Post, USA Today, US News and World Report, Science, Nature, and National Geographic News.

    Rob is a recent Guggenheim Fellow and sabbatical visitor in the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is also a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, and Ecological Society of America. He received a Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering from the National Science Foundation, awarded at the White House.

  • Julie Kennedy

    Julie Kennedy

    Professor (Teaching) of Earth System Science, Emerita

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch
    For the past 21 years I have been active in designing and running the school's interdisciplinary environmental science and policy undergraduate major, the Earth Systems Program. I have specific interest in interdisciplinary teaching and learning, and in the effective communication of complex interdisciplinary problem descriptions, analysis methods, and solutions to expert and non-expert audiences. I advise and work on research projects with undergraduate and master's level students whose interests include ecology, energy, land systems management, ocean science and policy, sustainability, environmental education, and science communication.

    Teaching
    I teach classes in interdisciplinary problem analysis and in critical reading and review of environmental literature. I also am one of a number of faculty who co-teach the Earth Systems gateway course, Introduction to Earth Systems.

    Professional Activities
    My professional activities center on undergraduate education. I have been active for decades on Stanford committees that examine standards and policies, the review of general education requirements, undergraduate advising programs, student mental health, and student diversity.

  • Alexandra Konings

    Alexandra Konings

    Associate Professor of Earth System Science, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and, by courtesy, of Geophysics

    BioAlexandra Konings leads the Remote Sensing Ecohydrology group, which studies interactions between the global carbon and water cycles. That is, her research studies how changes in hydrological conditions change ecosystems, and how this in turn feeds back to weather and climate. These interactions include studies of transpiration and root water uptake, photosynthesis, mortality, and fire processes, among others. To address these topics, the groups primarily uses the tools of model development and remote sensing (satellite) data, especially microwave remote sensing data of vegetation water content. Alex believes that a deep understanding of remote sensing techniques and how they can be used to create environmental datasets enables new opportunities for scientific insight and vice versa.

  • Eric Lambin

    Eric Lambin

    George and Setsuko Ishiyama Provostial Professor and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
    On Leave from 01/01/2024 To 03/31/2024

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI study human-environment interactions in land systems by linking remote sensing, GIS and socio-economic data. I aim at better understanding causes and impacts of changes in tropical forests, drylands, and farming systems. I currently focus on land use transitions – i.e., the shift from deforestation (or land degradation) to reforestation (or land sparing for nature), – the influence of globalization on land use decisions, and the interactions between public and private governance of land use.

  • Elena Litchman

    Elena Litchman

    Professor (By Courtesy), Earth System Science

    BioElena Litchman is a faculty member in the Department of Global Ecology of the Carnegie Institution for Science and a Professor (by courtesy) in the Department of Earth System Science. Prior to joining Carnegie and Stanford, she was an MSU Foundation Professor at Michigan State University. She received her undergraduate degree from Moscow State University, Russia, and Ph.D. in Ecology from University of Minnesota.

    Dr. Litchman is an ecologist, interested in community assembly, resilience, and eco-evolutionary responses of microbial communities to changing environments, including anthropogenic global change, and the consequences of community changes for biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles, and ecosystem functioning. She works on a wide range of systems, from freshwater lakes, to oceans, gut microbiota and algal biofuel communities. She uses experiments, field work, data analyses and models to investigate fundamental and applied questions in ecology and environmental science.

    She received the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award from the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), and the Petersen Foundation Excellence Professorship Award from the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research, Germany. She is the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) and the NSF CAREER Award.

  • David Lobell

    David Lobell

    Benjamin M. Page Professor, William Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, at the Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWe study the interactions between food production, food security, and the environment using a range of modern tools.

  • 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.

  • Anna M. Michalak

    Anna M. Michalak

    Professor (By Courtesy), Earth System Science

    BioDr. Anna M. Michalak is the Founding Director of the Carnegie Climate and Resilience Hub at the Carnegie Institution for Science, where she has been a Faculty Member since 2011 and served as Director of the Department of Global Ecology for 2020-2023. Michalak also holds appointments as Professor (by courtesy) in the Department of Earth System Science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and the Department of Biology at Stanford University. Prior to joining Carnegie, she was the Frank and Brooke Transue Faculty Scholar and Associate Professor at the University of Michigan. She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University, and a B.Sc.(Eng.) in Environmental Engineering from the University of Guelph, Canada.

    Dr. Michalak studies the cycling and emissions of greenhouse gases at the Earth surface at urban to global scales – scales directly relevant to informing climate and policy – primarily through the use of atmospheric observations that provide the clearest constraints at these critical scales. She also explores climate change impacts on freshwater and coastal water quality via influences on nutrient delivery to, and on conditions within, water bodies. Her approach is highly data-driven, with a common methodological thread being the development and application of spatiotemporal statistical data fusion methods for optimizing the use of limited in situ and remote sensing environmental data.

    She is the lead author of the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Plan, Co-Chair of the National Academies committee for the midterm assessment of the NASA decadal survey for Earth system observations from space, Co-Chair of the carbon and water advisory boards for Schmidt Sciences, Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society, and Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google Research. Previously, she was Editor of the journal Water Resources Research and Chair of the scientific advisory board for the European Integrated Carbon Observation System. She is the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (nominated by NASA), the NSF CAREER award, the Leopold Fellowship in environmental leadership, and the American Geophysical Union’s Simpson Medal.

  • Diana Moanga

    Diana Moanga

    Lecturer

    BioDiana Moanga is a Lecturer and the Manager of the Spatial Analysis Center in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. She teaches the Remote Sensing of Land class and the Fundamentals of Geographic Information Science class. Her research includes studying land use land cover change processes using remote sensing and spatial analysis, focusing on the effects of environmental and anthropogenic stressors on coastal socio-environmental systems. She is particularly passionate about furthering our understating of climate equity for coastal communities and mapping coastal hazards at various scales. She has a Ph.D. in Environmental Science Policy and Management from UC Berkeley in 2020. Her dissertation research used geospatial techniques to study land use and land cover changes across California. Specifically, her research explored management impacts on California’s coastal lands, agricultural transitions in the Central Valley, and wildfire activity under future climate regimes. Diana also earned a Master’s in Science in Marine Affairs and Policy from the University of Miami in 2015. For her master's research she examined the spatial and temporal characteristics of harmful algal blooms and studied coastal zone management and coral conservation.

  • Rosamond Naylor

    Rosamond Naylor

    William Wrigley Professor, Professor at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute, at the Freeman Spogli Institute and Professor, by courtesy, of Economics and of Earth System Science

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch Activities:
    My research focuses on the environmental and equity dimensions of intensive food production systems, and the food security dimensions of low-input systems. I have been involved in a number of field-level research projects around the world and have published widely on issues related to climate impacts on agriculture, distributed irrigation systems for diversified cropping, nutrient use and loss in agriculture, biotechnology, aquaculture and livestock production, biofuels development, food price volatility, and food policy analysis.

    Teaching Activities:
    I teach courses on the world food economy, food and security, aquaculture science and policy, human society and environmental change, and food-water-health linkages. These courses are offered to graduate and undergraduate students through the departments of Earth System Science, Economics, History, and International Relations.

    Professional Activities:
    William Wrigley Professor of Earth Science (2015 - Present); Professor in Earth System Science (2009-present); Director, Stanford Center on Food Security and the Environment (2005-2018); Associate Professor of Economics by courtesy (2000-present); William Wrigley Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Woods Institute for the Environment (2007-2015); Trustee, The Nature Conservancy CA program (2012-present); Member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics in Stockholm (2011-present), for the Aspen Global Change Institute (2011-present), and for the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program (2012-present); Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow in Environmental Science and Public Policy (1999); Pew Fellow in Conservation and the Environment (1994). Associate Editor for the Journal on Food Security (2012-present). Editorial board member for Aquaculture-Environment Interactions (2009-present) and Global Food Security (2012-present).

  • Kabir Peay

    Kabir Peay

    Director of the Earth Systems Program, Associate Professor of Biology, of Earth System Science and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur lab studies the ecological processes that structure natural communities and the links between community structure and the cycling of nutrients and energy through ecosystems. We focus primarily on fungi, as these organisms are incredibly diverse and are the primary agents of carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. By working across multiple scales we hope to build a 'roots-to-biomes' understanding of plant-microbe symbiosis.

  • Lorenzo Rosa

    Lorenzo Rosa

    Assist Prof (By Courtesy), Earth System Science

    BioLorenzo Rosa is a Principal Investigator at Carnegie Science. Lorenzo is also an Assistant Professor (by courtesy) in the Doerr School of Sustainability at Stanford University. Prior to joining Carnegie, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute of Energy and Process Engineering at ETH Zurich. He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from University of California Berkeley, and a B.S. and M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy.

    Dr. Rosa's research focuses on enhancing agricultural productivity and promoting sustainability in agriculture, energy, and water systems. He addresses the challenges posed by climate change to agriculture and explores strategies to minimize the environmental impacts of farming. Dr. Rosa's impactful research informs sustainable development policies and investments, contributing to agricultural and water sustainability. His work also assesses the potential benefits, and unintended consequences, of innovations designed to meet global demands for energy, water, and food.

    ​​Dr. Rosa’s contributions to science and society have been recognized through multiple awards, including the 2019 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Hydrology Research Grant and the 2021 AGU Science for Solutions Award. The latter award is given “for significant contributions in the application and use of the Earth and space sciences to solve societal problems,” and in Dr. Rosa’s case recognized his contributions to understanding global water-energy-food linkages and solutions to benefit humanity and nature. The AGU is the primary professional society in Dr. Rosa’s field, and these awards are extremely selective and highly prestigious. In addition to these awards, he was also listed among the most influential young leaders in Science and Technology of the year 2020 by Forbes 30 Under 30.

    ​​Dr. Rosa is an avid sportsman, when he is not at his desk, you can find him running, cycling, swimming, and skiing. In his career as athlete, he won the Regional and Italian Championships in mountain running.

    Recent publications can be found on his Google Scholar page: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=riiy1mEAAAAJ

    Lab website: https://lorenzo-rosa.wixsite.com/curriculum

  • Aditi Sheshadri

    Aditi Sheshadri

    Assistant Professor of Earth System Science and, by courtesy, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment

    BioI joined Stanford's Earth System Science department as an assistant professor 2018. Prior to this, I was a a Junior Fellow of the Simons Foundation in New York, and a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University’s Department of Applied Physics and Applied Math and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. I got my Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, in the Program for Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate, where I worked with R. Alan Plumb. I’m broadly interested in atmosphere and ocean dynamics, climate variability, and general circulation.

    I'm particularly interested in fundamental questions in atmospheric dynamics, which I address using a combination of theory, observations, and both idealized and comprehensive numerical experiments. Current areas of focus include the dynamics, variability, and change of the mid-latitude jets and storm tracks, the stratospheric polar vortex, and atmospheric gravity waves.

  • Leif Thomas

    Leif Thomas

    Professor of Earth System Science and, by courtesy, of Geophysics, of Civil and Environmental Engineering and of Oceans

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPhysical oceanography; theory and numerical modeling of the ocean circulation; dynamics of ocean fronts and vortices; upper ocean processes; air-sea interaction.

  • Peter Vitousek

    Peter Vitousek

    Clifford G. Morrison Professor of Population and Resource Studies, Professor of Earth System Science, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor, by courtesy, of Biology

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsVitousek's research interests include: evaluating the global cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus, and how they are altered by human activity; understanding how the interaction of land and culture contributed to the sustainability of Hawaiian (and other Pacific) agriculture and society before European contact; and working to make fertilizer applications more efficient and less environmentally damaging (especially in rapidly growing economies)

  • Yuan Wang

    Yuan Wang

    Assistant Professor of Earth System Science

    BioYuan Wang is an assistant professor in the Department of Earth System Science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He is also an affiliated faculty in the Woods Institute for the Environment. Prior to joining Stanford, he was an associate professor at Purdue University and a research scientist at California Institute of Technology. His research group aims to advance the understanding of the physical and chemical interactions between atmospheric constituents and climate change. Specifically, his group conducts research related to aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions and their climatic implications, aerosol properties and haze formation, cloud microphysics and dynamics, and the assessment of the greenhouse gas and aerosol forcings on the atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere. They develop and use hierarchical and multiscale weather and climate models in combination with space-borne and in situ measurements to address those scientific questions.