Throughout Winter Quarter, E-IPER students and alumni were hard at work with courses and research in addressing environment and resource sustainability challenges. We hope you enjoy learning about our community's exciting happenings and accomplishments!

In this issue:

• Director's Desk
• New Staff: Amberlin Chen
• PhD & MS Collaboration Grants, MS Research Assistantships
• Events: Featured Faculty Talk, Joint & Dual MS Winter Capstone Symposium
• Student Connections: Surprise Baby Shower, E-IPER Tea, Valentine's Happy Hour, Valentine's Kit-Tea, Turkish Brunch
• Student & Alumni News, Awards & Honors, Publications & Presentations

Dear E-IPER community,

Since stepping into the role of Faculty Director this past September, I have been stunned by the phenomenal leaders in our student, alumni, and faculty community. From connecting over lunch discussions with our PhD and MS students to witnessing the impactful, real-world collaborations that emerge from an interdisciplinary program like ours, I am filled with inspiration and gratitude for the strength and engagement of our community. 

The new year always brings new reflections. I admit, I don’t usually make resolutions, but I find that lens now to be helpful in envisioning resolutions for myself in our collective community. In those productive conversations with students and faculty members, I’ve seen a common thread: a resolution of growth for our future as a community.

While winter quarter - on the surface, only! - may feel a bit bereft of the natural excitement that comes with welcoming new cohorts of students in fall quarter or celebrating our graduates in spring quarter, much has been happening behind the scenes at E-IPER this winter. As the last strategic plan for E-IPER was in 2017, our faculty and staff have been in deep discussion around crafting the next strategic plan to guide E-IPER’s future. As we all know how our program, our school, and the world itself have transformed since 2017, we hope that you will continue to engage with us to explore our community’s reflections and perspectives to support E-IPER’s continued growth. 

Sending warm regards as I write to you from Mauritius, where the Prime Minister has just spoken about environmental stewardship and cultural heritage in the same sentence - how’s that for interdisciplinarity! 

All best wishes,

Krish

Welcome New Staff:

Amberlin Chen

We are thrilled to welcome Amberlin Chen to the E-IPER team as our newest Administrative Associate. Amberlin started with E-IPER at the beginning of Winter quarter and has jumped right in supporting our PhD site visit and Project Planet event planning, as well as supporting our PhD & MS students and E-IPER staff in all event and financial planning.

Prior to E-IPER, Amberlin has worked as an event director, a laboratory research assistant, and an elementary school teacher in Bay Area public schools.



Amberlin’s interests in sustainability and education were first sparked as a Human Biology major at Stanford, then expanded when exploring interdisciplinary STEM learning with her first-grade students. At E-IPER, Amberlin is looking forward to supporting student and faculty initiatives to build community and continue furthering the incredible research currently taking place. She is thrilled to continue growing and learning with the E-IPER community.

As an undergraduate student, Amberlin was part of Stanford Taiko, a Japanese drumming ensemble on campus. Since then, she has continued to love playing taiko in Palo Alto every week and performing for the local community. Outside of work, Amberlin also loves to read and take long walks in the sunshine.

If you haven’t yet met Amberlin, please stop by the suite and say hello!

PhD & MS Collaboration Grants

The 2023 - 2024 collaboration grant student teams have been finishing up their projects. 

Ian (center) and Meghan (right) with California State Assemblymember Dawn Addis at COP28 in Dubai.

Meghan and Ian at the COP28 Stanford booth.

Sankalp Banerjee (MBA-MS)

Kirat Singh (PhD, 4th year)

Sergio (right) with Congressman José Antonio Estefan Gillessen from the state of Oaxaca and Nobel Laureate in Physics Donna Strickland at the Mexican Congress.

Sergio Sanchez (PhD, 3rd year) and Daniel Sandoval (MBA-MS) have been researching the business and social considerations for developing lithium mining in Mexico. This summer they traveled to Bacadéhuachi, Sonora - the town closest to the largest identified lithium deposit in Mexico.

Joyce (left) and Cat (right) with Tara Scarborough, Chief Resilience Officer of the Coastal Zone Management Authority and Institute in Belize.

Catherine Lee Hing (PhD, 2nd year) and Joyce Lin (MIP-MS) are studying how blue bonds impact marine conservation efforts on small island states through the example of Belize’s 2021 blue bond. In November 2023, they traveled to Belize and conducted a series of semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with representatives from marine conservation NGOs, governmental departments, and fishers’ associations in Belize City, Belmopan, Placencia, Dangriga and Sarteneja.

High-level findings include 1) the blue bond agreement as facilitated by TNC seeks to advance a conservation agenda of setting up large marine-protected areas that will sharpen local tensions between small-scale fishers seeking to improve livelihoods and regulators seeking to restrict areas for fishing, 2) there are many existing regulatory and legislative barriers that need to be addressed to ensure sustainable resource use in marine and coastal ecosystems, but which are not included as part of the blue bond conservation agreement, undermining its effectiveness, and 3) introducing multiple sources of blue finance to fund marine conservation efforts at the same time, including the blue bond, may worsen coordination amongst key stakeholders and further undermine trust of coastal communities towards foreign financing mechanisms. Cat and Joyce will be writing up a case study of the Belize blue bond which will serve as a guide to governments presently considering blue bonds as a debt restructuring mechanism.

Five MS students have been awarded E-IPER MS RAships for spring quarter. Congratulations to Matt Benjamin (JD-MS), Ben Clark (JD-MS), Alexander Kleiner (MBA-MS), Michelle Ng (PhD-MS), and Jessica Pullen (MD-MS)!

The RAship offers students the opportunity to work on faculty-mentored, individualized projects exploring environment, energy, and sustainability research. Through this offering, E-IPER aims to encourage and accelerate collaboration among faculty scholars, their labs, and MS students as emerging practitioners.  

Matt Benjamin (JD-MS) will work with Professor Gretchen Daily and her team. The project aims to bring environmental considerations into the scenarios proposed in Colombia’s Road Map for Hydrogen, an ambitious governmental program that aims for exponential growth of electrolysis capacity to kickstart the hydrogen market, stimulate demand, and explore opportunities for hydrogen export. Colombia’s hydrogen strategy is exploring scenarios with a distributed fleet of small hydropower plants. However, such expansion scenarios have not yet been assessed for potential impacts on freshwater ecosystems. To meet this gap, this project will explore methodological and practical approaches to quantify the interaction between the prospective electricity demand for electrolysis and its cumulative impacts on freshwater systems.

Ben Clark (JD-MS) will work with Professor Debbie Sivas and Michael Wara on an ongoing project with the Law School’s Environmental and Natural Resource Law and Policy (ENRLP) Program and the Climate and Energy Policy Program. Together, they will engage with community coalitions on legal, policy, and technical issues raised by the coming transition of California’s oil refineries to other uses. Ben will assist in legal and policy analysis to support constructive solutions to the changing needs for refinery infrastructure in the context of transportation electrification and the impacts of refinery operations and their unfunded closure and cleanup costs on neighboring communities.

Alexander Kleiner (MBA-MS) will work with Professors Omer Karaduman and Kuang Xu on enhancing the understanding of battery manufacturing and recycling processes. The project aims to map out the entire lifecycle of batteries, from production to disposal, identifying key areas for efficiency improvements and environmental sustainability. Alex’s work will include gathering data on existing battery supply chains, analyzing manufacturing practices, and studying the end-of-life treatment of batteries. This information will help in developing more sustainable practices and policies in the battery industry.

Michelle Ng (PhD-MS) will work with Professor Gabrielle Wong-Parodi on exploring questions regarding the association between extreme weather event experience, perceptions, and climate-related behaviors. Michelle will be using collected survey data of thousands of American adults from 2021’s Hurricane Henri in New England, 2022’s Hurricane Ian in the American South, and an atmospheric river in the West Coast in 2024.

Jessica Pullen (MD-MS) will work with Professor Stephen Luby and Dr. Jenna Forsyth, an E-IPER alumna (PhD, ‘19) on research to improve rapid lead detection methods for assessing the human lead burden. Jessica with work with the research team to determine the feasibility of using human nails (toe/finger) to identify the body lead burden more rapidly, less invasively, and at a lower cost than can be done currently.

On Wednesday, February 28, 2024, Professor Elliott White, Jr. gave a special presentation to E-IPER, titled "Life on the Margins of Society and the Environment" to share his recent research in coastal socio-ecological systems. 

Professor White is a coastal ecosystem scientist who leverages his domain expertise in wetland sciences with interdisciplinary training in remote sensing and ecohydrology. His research focuses on investigating climate change related challenges on coastal socio-ecological systems. His passion for this area of research is driven by his lived experience on the US Gulf Coast and anchored by his strong grasp of coastal ecology. Professor White has ongoing research projects that are partnering with community-based organizations to 1) leverage wetlands as a form of flood protection, 2) create access points to carbon markets, and 3) develop an equity-focused coastal hazard emergency preparedness platform.

Professor White’s talk highlighted the increased inequalities in coastal regions of the US attributable to both chronic (i.e. sea level rise and saltwater intrusion) and acute (i.e. flooding, hurricanes, heat waves, and cold snaps) effects of anthropogenic climate change. Through an interdisciplinary approach, his research aims to understand social vulnerability and develop equity-focused solutions.

Section contributed by Ayako Kawano (PhD, 2nd year).

Winter 2024 Capstone cohort (from left to right: Matt Ricotta, Alexander Kleiner, Stephen Read, Sankalp Banerjee, Edgar Bendezu, and Katie Mansur) with teaching team.

During the 10-week quarter, the Winter Capstone cohort, comprising two JD-MS students and four MBA-MS students, synthesized their knowledge in environment and resources with their professional school skill sets to understand and interpret a variety of significant environmental challenges. In their culminating experience of the quarter (and of the Joint and Dual MS program), the Winter Capstone cohort delivered presentations on projects that explored topics such as renewable energy in Peru, inclusive utility investment in Nevada, and more. The projects offered innovative perspectives on the work that is currently occurring in these spaces and proposed creative solutions for moving forward. E-IPER faculty affiliate, Professor John Weyant, and E-IPER lecturer, Anna Lee (PhD, '22), instructed the course and supported students during their intensive capstone journey. Thank you as well to Randall Holmes (PhD, '23) for assisting the course.

The recordings of each presentation will be available on the E-IPER website. 

As part of the Capstone Symposium Reception, Matt Ricotta (MBA-MS), who presented an environmental and market analysis for a climate-focused bakery, treated audience members to a delicious selection of his vegan baked goods. Thank you, Matt, and best wishes for your future bakery!

Surprise Baby Shower!

Congratulations to expecting parents Fridah Nyakundi (PhD, 3rd year), Camille Effler (PhD, 1st year), and Eeshan Chaturvedi (PhD, 2nd year) & Anoushka Chaturvedi!

Wellness Coordinator Leona Neftaliem (PhD, 2nd year) organized a beautiful baby shower, which was completely a surprise to all the expecting parents! During the baby shower, E-IPER students and staff designed baby onesies, decorated diapers, and wrote encouraging notes to each of the families. We wish all the best to the expecting parents and their loved ones!

Diaper decorating activity.

E-IPER students conversing and designing onesies!

E-IPER Tea

E-IPER Weekly Tea continues on Fridays in the suite! This event allows a chance to connect with friends, relax, and enjoy some tasty treats. Each week, a different volunteer whips up a culinary creation to share with the group. Winter E-IPER tea highlights included birthday celebrations, puzzling, Valentine’s Day card making, and special feline guests to facilitate relaxation!

Section contributed by Leona Neftaliem (PhD, 2nd year).

Valentine's Happy Hour

Valentine's Kit-Tea Event

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, E-IPER staff member Ai Tran brought her beautiful kittens, JoJo March and Gia Darcy, to the E-IPER Suite! Our students and staff loved getting the chance to hang out with the kittens, give them many treats, and enjoy some cuddly hugs.

Turkish Brunch

In early March, Anaïs Voski (PhD, 3rd year) organized brunch at Hummus Mediterranean! It was a fun event for our PhD and MS students to connect with each other over a traditional Turkish brunch.

Interested in hosting an alumni event in your city?



E-IPER staff are always happy to partner with you to plan an event! Please contact Amberlin Chen (ambchen@stanford.edu) or Mike Diaz (mikediaz@stanford.edu) for more details.

COP28: United Nations Climate Change Conference

E-IPER had several students travel to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to attend COP28. Joyce Lin (MIP-MS) shared her reflections:

I was at COP28 for six days, and lucky to be able to chat candidly with and learn from government and non-government delegates at the conference, which helped contextualize my observations and left me with three key takeaways:

1. Pay attention to power imbalance in the global financial system – the international community should be clear-eyed about how the “transition away from fossil fuels” is unrealistic within an imbalanced economic system without much stronger financial commitments from developed economies.
2. Mainstream climate justice and rights-based language – we should frame our approach to addressing the climate and ecological crisis as foremost about respecting rights; right to healthy environment, right to peace, right to health; and not just about creating more market “access,” access to public goods that are conditional on markets’ receptivity and not guaranteed in any way.
3. Amplify voices of unrepresented and underrepresented groups – we must pay close attention to whether groups historically side-lined in climate negotiations have their interests accounted for in the final agreements. For example, Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement, which will create a global carbon market overseen by a United Nations entity, contains no specific requirement to obtain free, prior and informed consent from indigenous peoples and local communities about carbon removal projects rolled out on their lands. Indigenous peoples do not have a seat at the negotiating table where delegates debate the inclusion of social and environmental safeguards meant to respect the rights of indigenous peoples, bringing into question the legitimacy of negotiations themselves.

Keynote address given by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell of Grenada.

New Spring Course: Climate Displacement

E-IPER PhD students, Rudy (Rwaida) Gharib (PhD, 1st year) and Erica Bower (PhD, 5th year), are organizing a Spring Quarter seminar on Climate Migration, Displacement, and Human Mobility. Working with their joint advisor, Chris Field (Woods Institute), and Rudy's advisor, Jan Martinez (SLS), as well as students in Stanford's climate displacement group – a group of students from the law, policy, and sustainability schools - they have created a 10-week syllabus featuring guest speakers who bring personal, policy, and scholarly expertise to this emerging issue.

The course is listed under Earth System Sciences (ESS), cross-listed under Human Rights (HUMRTS), and will be offered on Thursdays from 1:30-2:50pm. This seminar will speak to the phenomena of both internal and cross-border migration driven by climate change, addressing themes such as planned relocation; economic, social, psychological, and cultural costs of displacement; and the human impacts of climate change on individuals, communities, and governments. Over the ten weeks, the course will focus on both understanding the challenges that come with the climate crisis as well as proposed solutions to these challenges, in addition to opportunities for correcting past injustices and harms. Possible thematic focuses for our discussions include: (1) Legal, policy and governance implications of internal versus cross-border displacement, (2) The nexus of climate with conflict/public health/agriculture as drivers of mobility, (3) Individual- vs. community-centric displacement solutions (e.g., household buyouts vs. community planned relocations), and (4) Indigenous sovereignty and rights.

Upcoming Climate Displacement Conference

Erica and Rudy are also part of the planning team organizing a Climate Change & Human Mobility Conference at the GSB in May. This two-day conference will convene scholars, researchers, and practitioners whose work focuses on the convergence of climate change, environmental disasters, and human mobility. Conference sessions will cover climate-driven mobility, public health impacts of climate change, climate displacement law and policy, and climate change impacts on indigenous and other vulnerable communities, among other topics. Conference events will also include a film screening and networking opportunities.

Please join us for both or any of these opportunities. We'd love to see E-IPERnauts (past and present) in the mix!

Rachel Carlson (PhD, ‘23) was offered an Assistant Professor job at UC Berkeley, to start Jan 2025. Congratulations, Rachel!

After postdoctoral positions at UCSB and the University of Maine, Caroline Ferguson Irlanda (PhD, ‘21) will be returning to Stanford this spring to work with Prof. Nicole Ardoin on questions of collective action and environmental literacy. She is excited to continue her community-driven research and education with fishing communities in Palau and to expand in new directions with partnerships in Galápagos. Later this year, she and her husband Ryan are expecting their first child!

As of 2024, Jennifer Wang (PhD, ‘18) has joined Framework as their Chief Product Officer. Framework is an electronics company whose mission is to create products that address and reduce the environmental impact of the electronics industry. Framework's laptop was listed by Time Magazine as one of the best inventions of 2023!

Peter Morgan (MS-JD, ‘06) continues to work as a Senior Attorney for Sierra Club, with a focus on making sure fossil fuel extractors clean up after themselves. He recently had the opportunity to testify before Congress on issues related to oversight of coal mine reclamation. While in DC, he got to catch up with Andrew Perlstein (PhD, ‘12).

Nicola Ulibarri (PhD, ‘15) and A.R. Siders (PhD, ‘18) were both contributing authors to the 5th National Climate Assessment chapter on adaptation - building off their research on climate adaptation and environmental governance.

Frances Moore (PhD, ‘15) has been named Hurlstone Presidential Chair and a UC Davis Chancellor's Fellow.

Francisca Santana (PhD, ‘22) was recently a part of two successful grant proposals. She is part of a research team that was selected by NASA to receive $1.6 million to study human risk perception of and response to wildland fire smoke using new satellite-derived extreme smoke data. Additionally, in a project she is co-leading, Francisca's team was selected by the National Academies of Sciences, Gulf Research Program to receive $700,000 to facilitate the design of a living shorelines network to support the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe's climate adaptation efforts.

Our alumni have been busy publishing and presenting!

Journal Articles

Shannon Switzer Swanson (PhD, ‘22) recently published a new academic article in Nature Partner Journal Ocean Sustainability using her dissertation research, titled "Catching Dory: selling aquarium fish supports coastal livelihoods in Indonesia." 

Photos contributed by Shannon Switzer Swanson.

A.R. Siders (PhD, ‘18), Nicola Ulibarri (PhD, ‘15), Amanda Cravens (PhD, ‘14), and Rebecca Nelson (E-IPER affiliate & Stanford Law JSD, ‘14) published a slightly tongue-in-cheek article "How to slay your zombie research projects" in Nature Careers. The article grew out of their weekly feedback group -- which started back at EIPER!

Nina Brooks (PhD, ‘21) published an article entitled "U.S. global health aid policy and family planning in sub-Saharan Africa" in Science Advances in December 2023.

Frances Moore (PhD, ‘15) published an article titled "Unequal climate impacts on global values of natural capital” in Nature.

News Articles and Reports

Caroline Ferguson Irlanda (PhD, ‘21) is producing Surf & Turf: A Seafood Justice Podcast. The latest season is about the health and safety of seafood workers. You can listen at https://www.surfandturfpodcast.com!

Presentations

Frances Moore (PhD, ‘15) was a guest on the Resources Radio Podcast with Daniel Raimi, where she discussed her role as senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisors. Give it a listen here!

Alison Ong (PhD, 4th year) gave a talk at the American Economic Association Annual Meeting (ASSA) in San Antonio in January. The presentation was "Pricing Synthetic Inertia: Strategies for Grid Stability in a Renewable Energy Future."

Traveling to Turrialba, Costa Rica, Lily Colburn (PhD, 1st year) attended the North American Agroforestry Conference. She gave two presentations: (1) "Beyond the Barn: Dairy Farmer Perspectives on Challenges and Opportunities of On-Farm Woodlot Management," and (2) "A Social-Ecological Framework for Agroecological Restoration."

For Bianca and Meghan, a highlight of the presentations was getting to share the interdisciplinary nature of the research they've worked on. Meghan shared, "It was really exciting to get to present both natural science and social science components of my work, and to continue the conversation with interested folks after the presentations. I now have so many ideas for future projects!"

Meghan presenting at the Ocean Sciences Meeting.

Bianca (right) and Meghan (center) with E-IPER alum Rachel Carlson (PhD, '23, left)!

Edited by:

The E-IPER Staff

Thank you for continuing to support E-IPER!

http://eiper.stanford.edu