Stanford University
Showing 1-5 of 5 Results
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Tiziana Vanorio
Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and, by courtesy, of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsRock Physics, Fossil Energy Exploration, Volcanic and Geothermal Environments and Microseismicity
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Edgar Virgüez
Research Engineer, Energy Science & Engineering
BioEdgar Virgüez is a Research Engineer in the Department of Energy Science & Engineering at Stanford University, where his work advances reliable, low-carbon energy systems. His findings have resulted in more than 40 scholarly outputs that have garnered over 950 citations in leading journals, including Energy & Environmental Science, PNAS, and Science. Dr. Virgüez serves on the Editorial Board of Environmental Research: Energy. In 2026, he received the IOP Publishing Editorial Excellence Award, recognized as one of the 10 outstanding board leaders among >1,000 board members across 100+ IOP journals. Beyond his editorial board service, he actively contributes to peer review across 15 leading journals, including Nature Communications and Nature Sustainability.
Complementing his scholarship, Dr. Virgüez serves as Managing Director of the $23 million U.S. Department of Energy-funded EARNEST Consortium, led by Stanford University. This initiative brings together 18 universities, three national laboratories, and two research organizations to advance solutions for the future of the U.S. electricity system. Beyond EARNEST, he has collaborated with the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, contributing expertise in life cycle assessment, cost-benefit analysis, and decarbonization strategies for governments and utilities across the Americas.
Globally, Dr. Virgüez contributes to major energy and climate initiatives. Since 2024, he has served as an Expert Advisor to the Earthshot Prize, founded by Prince William, reviewing nominations in the Fix Our Climate category and assessing their potential for innovation, impact, and scalability toward a $1.25 million annual award. He also serves in advisory roles for institutions such as Schmidt Sciences, evaluating research programs advancing scalable decarbonization and energy systems solutions, and provides expert review on energy-related reports for organizations, including the International Energy Agency.
For his contributions, Dr. Virgüez has received 22 awards totaling $34,365. Among his notable honors are the Science for Solutions Award (2025) from the American Geophysical Union, recognizing rising experts who have made significant contributions in the application and use of Earth and space science to solve societal problems, and the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award (2020) from the Association of American Colleges and Universities, which recognizes rising scholars who demonstrate strong promise as future leaders in higher education. As an educator, Dr. Virgüez has taught 17 courses to ~600 students with consistently outstanding evaluations and recognition for innovative teaching. In 2021, he received Duke University’s most prestigious teaching award for graduate scholars, the Graduate School Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
In 2022, he was elected Young Trustee to the Board of Trustees of Duke University, the institution’s highest governing body, in recognition of his leadership and contributions to the university community, where he served a three-year term. He currently serves on Duke’s Climate Commitment Campaign Advocates Board, advising on the university’s philanthropic climate initiative, and will join the Advisory Board of the Nicholas School of the Environment (summer 2026).
Dr. Virgüez holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences and Policy with a Certificate in College Teaching (2022) and an M.A. in Environment with a Geospatial Analysis Certificate (2018) from Duke University, along with an M.Sc. in Environmental Engineering (2010) and a dual B.Sc. in Chemical and Environmental Engineering (2009) from Universidad de los Andes. He has completed professional certificates in Australia, the United States, and Colombia, and has received more than $795,000 in competitive scholarships and fellowships sponsored by institutions including the Sloan Foundation. -
Peter Vitousek
Clifford G. Morrison Professor of Population and Resource Studies and Professor of Earth System Science, Emeritus
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)
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Madalina Vlasceanu
Assistant Professor of Environmental Social Sciences and, by courtesy, of Organizational Development at the Graduate School of Business
BioMadalina Vlasceanu is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Environmental Social Sciences at Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability and the Director of the Climate Cognition Lab. Professor Vlasceanu is also a Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center for Affective Science, the chair of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology at the United Nations, and a committee member of the Psychology Coalition at the United Nations, and the International Panel on the Information Environment. She obtained a PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience from Princeton University in 2021 and a BA in Psychology and Economics from the University of Rochester in 2016. Prior to Stanford, she was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at New York University. Her research focuses on the cognitive and social processes that give rise to emergent phenomena such as collective beliefs, collective decision-making, and collective action, with direct applications to climate policy. Guided by a theoretical framework of investigation, her research employs a large array of methods including behavioral laboratory experiments, social network analysis, field studies, randomized controlled trials, megastudies, and international many-lab collaborations, with the goal of understanding the processes underlying climate awareness and action at the individual, collective, and system level. Professor Vlasceanu's research is theoretically grounded and focused on applications for practice, incorporates an interdisciplinary perspective, and directly informs policies and practices relevant to climate mitigation and adaptation.
