Spring 2014 Newsletter
 
It has been another exciting spring for the E-IPER community. 
Welcome to our 24 new Joint MS students,  
and to our new Joint MS Program Manager, Anjana Richards! 
 
Features
E-IPER Exhibits Strong Presence at 
Connecting the Dots Symposium

Several members of the E-IPER community, including active students, alumni and affiliated faculty, offered their voices to this year's Connecting the Dots Symposium on Stanford's main campus. This annual event gathers students, faculty, policy makers and the public at-large for a discussion on the complex interrelations of global needs in energy, food, water, and environmental resources.



Michael Mastrandea (PhD, '04) (above), Co-Director of Science for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented on the research and release of the Working Group II report. This report, launched on March 31st, focuses on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability related to climate change.

 


Fran Moore (PhD, 4th) and Nik Sawe (PhD, 4th) (above) worked together to create a Connecting the Dots breakout session that combined Fran's knowledge of adaptation and Nik's knowledge of the heuristics and biases that influence decision making. The pair looked at the irrationalities and peculiarities of how people seek out and process information, how that shapes their perception of probabilities and extreme events, and how these forces influence climate change risk perception and response.

 

Aaron Strong (PhD, 3rd) also led a breakout session: "What Makes Something Anthropogenic Anyway? The Devils in the Details of Climate Policies." Aaron, who has been participating in the California Air Resources Board's Expert Technical Working Group on Carbon Offset Protocols for the last year and a half, was excited that his session "was able to engage earth system scientists, world leaders, state policy makers, concerned citizens, and those working in the clean energy sector in a frank and grounded dialogue, all at the same time."

Climate Week @ the GSB

"Businesses know they cannot succeed in a world that fails."  This was one of the key statements by former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, at the keynote speech of the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) inaugural Climate Week held April 13-18, 2014.   

 

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Echoing a similar message, a recent study 

by Accenture and the UN Global Compact found that 93% of CEOs see environmental sustainability as important to the success of their business. With these trends in mind, a motivated group of E-IPER Joint MBA-MS and PhD students came together to launch the first ever Climate Week at the GSB, an initiative to raise awareness about the issue of climate change among business students, and empower the future business leaders to act.    

 

 

The Climate Week team included Brooks Barron, Drew Fleeter and Whitney Skinner (Joint MBA-MS, 2015); Matt Mo and Kirsten Stasio (Joint MBA-MS 2014); Jennifer Wang (PhD, 2nd); Megan StarrSam Grausz, and Victoria Beasley (MBA 2015); and Nandi Chhabra (JD-MBA 2016).  

   

   

 

The week of events kicked off with a screening of James Cameron's new documentary series on climate change, "The Years of Living Dangerously," and continued with a mix of speaker events and social functions. Speakers included cleantech heavyweights Stefan Heck and Cathy Zoi, Secretary George P. Shultz, Dr. Gro Brundtland, and a panel discussion on the Risky Business initiative.  Other events during the week included a company cleantech networking event hosted by the Stanford Energy Club, a tour of Stanford's new energy cogeneration plant, and the annual Connecting the Dots Symposium.  

 

Throughout Climate Week, GSB students were encouraged to offset their emissions using carbon offset projects selected by the Climate Week team. Partners and funders of the initiative included E-IPERSustainable Stanford, the Center for Social Innovation, the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, the Precourt Institute for Energy, and several student clubs.  

 

 


SHINE Lunch Series

Students Helping Interdisciplinary Networking and Education (SHINE)  hosted a "Bite-Sized Research Design" lunch series over four weeks this spring. Student panels shared their experiences conducting experiments and quasi-experiments, single and comparative case studies, and meta-analyses, and participants discussed some challenges and best practices in interdisciplinary co-authorship.  

 

 

Over 100 students from 25 Stanford departments signed up to participate in at least one of the four lunches, whose goals were to generate cross-departmental discussions on how different fields investigate knowledge and to offer students from across the university an opportunity to explore unfamiliar research designs.  

  

SHINE is spearheaded by members of last year's ENVRES 320 class (including Jennifer Wang, PhD, 2nd; Joann De Zegher, PhD, 2nd; Hajin Kim, JD-PhD, 2nd; and Andy Stock, PhD, 2nd). It is funded by a Stanford Vice Provost for Graduate Education (VPGE) SPICE grant. The "Bite-Sized Research Design" Lunch Series was a follow-up to the fall SHINE workshop on different epistemological approaches in research, and is part of a broader campaign to increase collaboration and communication amongst students from different disciplines around campus.  Please contact Jennifer Wang if you are interested in learning more!   

Alumni Spotlight
Herzog Addresses the U.S. Senate, Practitioners and National Media on Plastic Marine Pollution and Climate Change

 

Megan Herzog (JD-MS, 2011) has had a busy year as the Emmett/Frankel Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. She has published several pieces, including a co-authored Supreme Court brief in a recent climate change case about regulating power plant emissions, Utility Air Regulatory Group vs. EPA.

  

Herzog has also co-authored an article on controlling plastic marine pollution titled "Stemming the Tide of Plastic Marine Litter: A Global Action Agenda." In correspondence with this publication, Herzog was interviewed by the Huffington Post Live on the problem of marine plastic pollution, along with researcher Mark Gold and actress Amy Smart. 

  

 

Megan has given a variety of presentations in recent months, including a talk about federal and state climate change regulation at an American Law Institute workshop, Navigating Regulation on Dual Tracks in Los Angeles, CA on March 14, 2014.    

 

Herzog addressed the Senate's Ocean Caucus in a briefing on marine plastic pollution ("International Legal Aspects of Marine Plastic Pollution Control") before an audience of senators, senatorial staff, federal and state agency officials, industry representatives and members of the NGO community in Washington, DC on December 9, 2013.   

Photo credits: Megan Herzog, Fran Moore, Lauren Oakes, and Jennifer Wang


Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in 
Environment & Resources

 

473 Via Ortega, Y2E2 Suite 226
Stanford, California 94305
New Staff and Faculty

New Joint MS Program Manager


  

Anjana Richards joined the E-IPER team in April 2014. She manages all aspects of the Joint MS program, including leading the Capstone seminar, serving as the primary liaison for Joint MS students, and representing the program across and beyond Stanford's campus. Anjana builds on 15 years of diverse experience designing and implementing programs in education, environment, energy and social equity with organizations including General Motors, Abbott Laboratories, Saatchi & Saatchi S and Skyline College.

 

New E-IPER affiliated faculty member Adam Brandt

 

 

Adam Brandt (Assistant Professor, Energy Resources Engineering, School of Earth Sciences) conducts research focused on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel sources.


Publications
 
Noa Kekuewa Lincoln (PhD, '13) has recently published two articles, one focused on soil fertility and the adaptation of agricultural intensification in Hawaii,
published in ESA's Ecosphere, and another examining the impact and importance of ethnoecology with respect to ingigenous agricultural developments, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Fran Moore (PhD, 4th) has co-authored an article titled "The Adaptation Potential of European Agriculture in Response to Climate Change" in  Nature Climate Change, 2014. The article was featured in a recent press release.

Aiga Stokenberga (PhD, 3rd) published an article titled "Does Bus Rapid Transit Influence Urban Land Development and Property Values: A Review of the Literature" in Transport Reviews: A Transnational Transdisciplinary Journal (2014, pp. 1-21).

Aaron Strong (PhD, 3rd) co-authored an article on ocean acidification in BioScience that has received attention at Stanford and beyond, including ClimateWire and Scientific American.


Awards & Honors
 
Emily Grubert (PhD, 1st) and Elinor Benami (PhD, 1st) were each awarded a
by the National Science Foundation.

Rachael Garrett (PhD, '13) received an NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellowship/Grant for a project centered on improving sustainability practice in US and Brazilian farming infrastructure. Rachael was also honored with thFulbright Regional Network for Applied Research (NEXUS) Award. 

 

Noa Kekuewa Lincoln (PhD, '13) was recently awarded the
Mellon-Hawaii postdoctoral fellowship and joins an impressive list of leaders and scholars leading the waves of change in Hawaii.

Aaron Strong (PhD, 3rd) received

the 2014 School of Earth Sciences Centennial Teaching Assistant Award and the Certificate for Outstanding Achievement in Mentoring.  

 

Presentations
 
Nicola Ulibarri (PhD, 4th) presented her research in a presentation titled "Assessing the Outcomes of Collaborative Governance in Federal Hydropower Licensing" at the Western Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA on April 17-19, 2014.

 

Aaron Strong (PhD, 3rd) presented at the 2014 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii in February. His presentation was titled "How much change matters? The implications of changes in primary production for the Chukchi Sea shelf ecosystem."

 

Kristen Honey (PhD, '12) helped to connect DOE's Fuel Cell Technologies Office with Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy, culminating in DOE Clean Energy Technology Showcase on April 15, 2014 at Stanford University. The event was a success with over 80 participants attending, including investors, industry, DOE leadership, and Stanford faculty and students in engineering, chemistry, and interdisciplinary research.


Career Updates 
Noa Kekuewa Lincoln (PhD, '13) is currently a research fellow with the Ngat Tahu Research Center at the University of Canterbury in Aotearoa, NZ. In this tribe-sponsored position, Noa continues his work aimed at bridging traditional indigenous and modern scientific knowledge to forge technical and political solutions to environmental management programs.

Rachael Garrett (PhD, '13) has accepted as position as Assistant Professor of Human Dimensions of Global Change in the
Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University.

Tom Elson (MBA-MS '12) started this past fall at the White House working on climate and energy policy, spending most of his time implementing President Obama's Climate Action Plan  

 

Megan Guy (MBA-MS, '11) recently left the energy venture capital world to take on a new role at The Nature Conservancy, where she is leading the Conservancy's efforts to integrate the value of nature and ecosystem services into the global business practices of major corporations.   

 

Kate Brauman (PhD, '10) accepted a position as Lead Scientist for Global Water Assessment at the UMN Institute on the Environment, where she will be developing IonE's latest water-related research.

 

Kirsten Oleson (PhD, '07) has settled into a position as Assistant Professor of Ecological Economics at the University of Hawaii. Her research focuses on ridge-to-reef management decision support tools, non-market valuation and sustainability indicators.