Current Fellows

Short Biographies

2009 Fellows

 

Shahzeen Attari 

Shahzeen Attari received her dual Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.  She also holds a Masters in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Carnegie Mellon.  Her thesis research addressed ways to change human behavior to facilitate a decrease in carbon dioxide emissions per capita. To address this research area, Attari designed intervention experiments to facilitate a decrease in energy consumption and is now investigating how the perceptions of experts and the public differ on how much energy different behaviors require.  Among other areas, her current research interests are focused on psychological triggers and public policy options to decrease an individual’s energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.  As an Earth Institute Fellow, she will focus her research on designing carefully controlled experiments to understand real-world problems that present obstacles to sustainable development.

 

Ilana Brito 

Ilana Lauren Brito received her Ph.D. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and  graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a BA in Biology and Government.  Her Ph.D. studies focused on cellular mechanisms of maintaining genome integrity.  Brito has also been involved with projects addressing the political and economic aspects of infectious disease prevention and treatment. She participated in the planning and evaluation of emergency procedures to prepare Boston’s Logan International Airport to contain a serious infectious disease outbreak.  Her principle field of interest is zoonotic infectious disease emergence.  As an Earth Institute Fellow, Brito will take a multi-disciplinary approach to developing disease prevention and containment strategies by understanding how changing environmental conditions correlate with the emergence of zoonotic diseases.

 

Chao Chen 

Chao Chen completed her Ph.D. in a co-supervised program from the Australia Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, and the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. Chen also holds an MS from Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology in Meteorology.  Chen’s principle fields of interest are the impacts of human activities and climate change on agricultural production and hydrology, agricultural system models, crop-water relationships, and water management under variable climate and farming system sustainability.  Her proposed research: “Assessing the Impacts of Climate Change on Crop productivity and Water Balance in China and the Unites States,” will evaluate the comparability and difference of the impacts of climate change on crop production, water productivity and field water balance in a greenhouse world.  Chen will also explore adaptation strategies for agricultural production and water resource use.

 

Gillian Galford

Gillian Galford received her Masters of Science and her Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from Brown University.  Her principle fields of interest are land-cover and land-use change.  As an Earth Institute Fellow, Galford will pursue her interest in the earth sciences within a context relevant to the human environment.  Her postdoctoral research proposal, titled, “Landscape analysis for efficient strategies for fertilizer use and adaptations to climate change: The Case of Malawi,” will estimate recent crop yield and soil fertility changes based on Malawi’s Green Revolution efforts. She aims to address national- to local- scale economic strategies of how to use fertilizer most efficiently by understanding where fertilizer does the most good and how local management practices may improve yields.

 

Jonathan Hickman

Jonathan Hickman is a new Earth Institute Fellow at Columbia University.  Hickman received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.  His proposed research at the Earth Institute is titled: “The impacts of a climate change-induced transition from crop to livestock production on ecosystems and food security in sub-Saharan Africa” and seeks to use complimentary field and model studies to provide an important perspective on the potential for a climate-induced transition from crop to livestock production in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and that transition’s impacts on ecosystems.  Prior to arriving at the Earth Institute, Hickman was a Diversity Research Consultant for FORTUNE magazine on corporate social responsibility issues, worked as a science journalist for an Ohio National Public Radio station, attended the American Meteorological Society’s Summer Policy Colloquium, served as a senior researcher for the Council on Economic Priorities, and spent three months as a Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the National Academies.

 

Carlos Pérez

Carlos Pérez García-Pando received his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the Technical University of Catalonia, Spain. He also holds a Spanish-French double degree in Engineering from The Technical University of Catalonia, Spain and École Centrale Paris.  Since 2006, Pérez has had a permanent position in the Earth Sciences Department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) where he established an active research line on atmospheric aerosol modeling.  His research in this position is mainly related to the development of global and regional mineral dust models; direct and indirect dust radiative effects, and air quality forecasting.  Through BSC, Pérez has also been providing forecasts of mineral dust for Northern Africa, the Middle East and Europe.  Over the past two years, Pérez has participated in a number of cross-discipline initiatives.  On one project, he worked with both the World Meteorological Organization and the National Weather Service to assess the role of dust deposition in the reduction of iron limitation in the Atlantic Ocean.  On another, he collaborated with veterinary scientists of the Complutense University of Madrid to study livestock blue tongue outbreaks in Spain and its relationship with desert dust transport from North Africa.  As an Earth Institute Fellow, Pérez will seek to provide new insights into two emerging problems with significant social and economic impacts requiring cross-disciplinary collaboration: the role of mineral dust in epidemics of meningococcal meningitis in the Sahel, and the links between mineral dust and Atlantic hurricane activity. 

 
2008 Fellows

 

Stergios Athanassoglou  

Stergios Athanassoglou is an Earth Institute Fellow who received his Ph.D in Operations Research from Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2008 and his B.A. in Mathematics from Yale College. He is native of Greece and focused his doctoral dissertation on game theoretic models of allocation. As a doctoral student, he developed and analyzed resource and cost allocation mechanisms, which, within certain frameworks for an economy, produce outcomes that meet precise criteria of efficiency and fairness. His current research interests are in the area of environmental and resource economics applied to groundwater management.  He is particularly interested in studying the design of contract farming mechanisms in India and in developing a general game-theoretic framework for groundwater extraction in the presence of land heterogeneity and income inequality. Regarding the latter, he studies the effects different subsidy mechanisms induce on equilibrium extraction patters.  Methodological tools include optimization, optimal control, and game theory. At the Earth Institute he is working with Manu Lall, Director of the Columbia Water Center, and Vijay Modi, Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Website: http://www.columbia.edu/~sa2164/

 

Sandra Baptista  

Sandra Baptista received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Geography from Rutgers University. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from Brown University. Baptista's research addresses sustainable development, globalization, social inequalities, human rights, and environmental justice by examining transformations in metropolitan regions. She is particularly interested in participatory approaches to environmental governance in Brazilian metropolitan settings. Her dissertation titled "Forest Recovery and Just Sustainability in the Florianópolis City-Region" analyzed the environmental history and the contemporary landscape of a coastal metropolitan region in southern Brazil. As an Earth Institute Fellow, she is continuing to examine the social and ecological dynamics of metropolitan regions. Her work includes research on land-use transitions, ecosystem services, vulnerabilities to climate change impacts, and opportunities for adaptation to climate-related risks. With a focus on the Latin American region, Baptista is contributing to the development of global-scale spatial data sets, products, and services that integrate socioeconomic, ecological, and remote sensing data, such as the Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project (GRUMP) data collection housed at the NASA-funded Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). She is working with Marc Levy and others at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN).

 

Liza Comita

Liza Comita received her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in Plant Biology. Her dissertation focused on patterns of tree and seedling distributions and dynamics in Panama in order to evaluate hypotheses concerning the maintenance of diversity in tropical forests. As an Earth Institute Fellow, she is  interpreting and applying research findings, both her own research and those of her colleagues, to conservation, restoration, and sustainable development efforts, with a particular focus on forest conservation in Latin America and forest regeneration after hurricanes in Puerto Rico. She has authored multiple academic papers, including publications in Nature, Ecology and Journal of Ecology. Comita also has a Masters degree in Conservation Biology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her Earth Institute core focus is Ecosystems and she is working with Maria Uriarte in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology (E3B).

 

Elisabeth King

Elisabeth King joined the Earth Institute after receiving her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto.  Her dissertation research examined the role of formal education in both violent conflict and peacebuilding in Rwanda.  At Columbia, working with Macartan Humphreys in the Department of Political Science, King is expanding her research to more broadly examine the nexus of development, conflict and peacebuilding in a number of African countries.  King has received several scholarships and awards for her work, including the Social Science & Humanities Research Council Grant and the Canadian Consortium on Human Security Fellowship.

 

Chie Sakakibara

Chie Sakakibara received her Ph.D. and Master’s in Cultural Geography and Art History, respectively, from the University of Oklahoma and her Bachelor’s Degree from Aichi Prefectural University in Nagoya, Japan. Her Ph.D. research examined how the Inupiat of Arctic Alaska culturally process environmental changes incurred by climate change. Funded by an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, she conducted fieldwork in Barrow and Point Hope, Alaska, and continues to travel to northern Alaska on a regular basis. While living with the Inupiat, she studies bowhead whaling and how associated social rituals establish the core of their cultural identity as the “People of the Whales.” Presently, climate change threatens subsistence whaling practices and, thus, makes global climate change policy a human rights concern for the Inupiat. Prior to her acceptance as an Earth Institute Fellow, she was invited by the Columbia University Center for Ethnomusicology as a part of their Native Studies Speakers Series to give a talk in the Fall of 2007 on her research. She now works with Aaron Fox, Director for the Center for Ethnomusicology, and Stephanie Pfirman, Department Chair, Environmental Science, Barnard College.

 

Sean Smukler

Sean Smukler studied ecology at the University of California, Davis, where he obtained his Ph.D.. His dissertation was titled “Managing Organic Farmscapes for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functions.” Smukler has worked in agriculture, ecological restoration, forestry and waste and sanitation sustainability. Before joining the Earth Institute, he had experience working in developing nations with farmers and an international development organization in the mountains of Nepal, creating strategies to conserve forest ecosystems by increasing on farm fodder production through agroforestry.  He now focuses his research in the Millennium Villages in sub-Saharan Africa, working with Cheryl Palm of the Tropical Agriculture Program and also with the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI). Smukler has received multiple awards including the Achievement Rewards for College Students Foundation Scholarship. He also holds a M.S. in Forest soils from the University of Washington and a B.S. in Environmental Biology and Management from UC Davis and is a certified permaculture designer.  

 

Leigh Winowiecki

Dr. Leigh Winowiecki is a PostDoctoral Research Fellow with the Earth Institute at Columbia University.  She studies the link between soil formation and biogeochemical cycling of plant nutrients in agroforestry systems in tropical landscapes. She received her Ph.D. in Soil Science jointly from the University of Idaho and CATIE (Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza) in Turrialba, Costa Rica.  Leigh's doctoral research also examined the role of local ecological (soil) knowledge of indigenous farmers in the development of innovative soil management techniques and technology transfer. At the Earth Institute, Leigh will contribute to the African Soil Information Service (AfSIS) project, which will digitally map and predict imperative soil properties of 18.1 million sq. km of sub-Saharan Africa.  She is working with Pedro Sanchez and Cheryl Palm in the Tropical Agriculture Program at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Bookmark and Share