Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
Showing 541-560 of 1,461 Results
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Siegfried Hecker
Professor (Research) of Management Science and Engineering and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly Interestsplutonium science; nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship; cooperative threat reduction
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Alex Hedgpeth
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioAlexandra Hedgpeth is a biogeochemist whose research explores how soil carbon cycling in peatlands responds to environmental change. Her work focuses on understanding the mechanisms that regulate carbon storage and greenhouse gas production in both tropical and boreal wetlands, with a particular emphasis on the vulnerability of deep, ancient carbon to modern surface inputs and hydrologic shifts.
Through her Ph.D. research at the University of California, Los Angeles, Alex has developed and applied novel isotopic and geochemical approaches—including implementing radiocarbon dating, stable isotope analyses, and high-resolution molecular characterization—to trace the sources and fates of carbon in peat soils. Her fieldwork spans a range of ecosystems, from ombrotrophic bogs in the Arctic to saturated tropical peat domes in Central America. This comparative framework allows her to identify unifying controls on carbon preservation and loss across climate zones.
Alex's research integrates field measurements, laboratory experiments, and synthesis of global datasets. She is a key contributor to multi-institutional efforts to model peatland carbon cycling under climate change scenarios, including DOE- and NSF-supported initiatives. Her work helps clarify the role of peatlands as both long-term carbon sinks and potential sources of atmospheric CO₂ and CH₄ under future disturbance.
In addition to her scientific contributions, Alex is committed to collaborative, interdisciplinary research and has worked closely with partners at national laboratories, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and international data synthesis networks. She is especially interested in questions with high uncertainty and high relevance to climate feedbacks—such as thresholds in biogeochemical function and the persistence of deep soil carbon under hydrologic change. -
Sebastian Heilpern
Assistant Professor of Earth System Science
BioSebastian is an ecologist and sustainability scientist studying the causes of biodiversity change and its consequences for ecosystems and human well-being, with a particular emphasis on aquatic ecosystems. In linking causes to consequences, his research also seeks to identify opportunities to align biodiversity conservation with societal objectives around public health, food systems, and renewable energy. His research integrates field work, data science and synthesis, and spans scales from local and regional studies in tropical river basins such as the Amazon to global analyses. Prior to joining Stanford, he was an Eric & Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University.
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Sarah Heilshorn
Rickey/Nielsen Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor, by courtesy, of Bioengineering and of Chemical Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProtein engineering
Tissue engineering
Regenerative medicine
Biomaterials -
Thomas Heller
Lewis Talbot and Nadine Hearn Shelton Professor of International Legal Studies, Emeritus
BioAn expert in international law and legal institutions, Thomas C. Heller has focused his research on the rule of law, international climate control, global energy use, and the interaction of government and nongovernmental organizations in establishing legal structures in the developing world. He has created innovative courses on the role of law in transitional and developing economies, as well as the comparative study of law in developed economies. He has co-directed the law school’s Rule of Law Program, as well as the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law. Professor Heller has been a visiting professor at the European University Institute, Catholic University of Louvain, and Hong Kong University, and has served as the deputy director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he is now a senior fellow.
Professor Heller is also a senior fellow (by courtesy) at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1979, he was a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and an attorney-advisor to the governments of Chile and Colombia. -
Martin Hellman
Professor of Electrical Engineering, Emeritus
BioMartin E. Hellman is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University and is affiliated with the university's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). His most recent work, "Rethinking National Security," identifies a number of questionable assumptions that are largely taken as axiomatic truths. A key part of that work brings a risk informed framework to a potential failure of nuclear deterrence and then finds surprising ways to reduce the risk. His earlier work included co-inventing public key cryptography, the technology that underlies the secure portion of the Internet. His many honors include election to the National Academy of Engineering and receiving (jointly with his colleague Whit Diffie) the million dollar ACM Turing Award, the top prize in computer science. In 2016, he and his wife of fifty years published "A New Map for Relationships: Creating True Love at Home & Peace on the Planet," providing a “unified field theory” for peace by illuminating the connections between nuclear war, conventional war, interpersonal war, and war within our own psyches.
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Natalie Herbert
Social Science Research Scholar
BioNATALIE HERBERT is a Research Scientist in the Department of Earth Systems Science at the Doerr School of Sustainability. Her research investigates decision-making in the face of environmental risk. She completed her Ph.D. in 2020 at the Annenberg School for Communication, where she researched health and science communication with a focus on communicating scientific uncertainty. Natalie was a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellow at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
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Rachel Herring
Ph.D. Student in Environment and Resources, admitted Autumn 2024
BioRachel Herring (Choctaw Nation) is investigating pathways towards a Just Transition as an E-IPER PhD student. Previously, she has recommended policy alternatives for domestic mining with the Department of Energy’s Indian Energy Program, and has explored impacts of critical mineral extraction on Native land as a Kathryn Wasserman Davis Conflict Transformation Fellow. Additionally, as a Fulbright Fellow and National Geographic Explorer, Rachel continues to investigate the intersection between the clean energy transition and the depopulation crisis in rural Japan. She was named a Next Generation Photographer by the 2024 Japan Photo Award in Kyoto, and her work has appeared in the New York Times. She holds an MA in International Environmental Policy from the Middlebury Institute, and a BA from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
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Susannah Herz
Ph.D. Student in Earth and Planetary Sciences, admitted Autumn 2023
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am interested in investigating the impacts of ocean anoxia through the end Permian mass extinction. My work utilizes a variety of isotope geochemistry techniques, including investigations of the sulfur, calcium, and thallium systems through both modeling and lab-based approaches.
