Stonington Professor of Engineering and Atmospheric Science Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology Affiliated Faculty Member of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Research in the Keutsch group is aimed at improving our understanding of photochemical oxidation processes of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that produce tropospheric ozone (O3) and are central to secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation. O3 and aerosol affect human health and climate, and uncertainties in the radiative effects of aerosol comprise the largest uncertainties in current estimates of anthropogenic forcing of climate. Our scientific approach builds on enabling new field observations of key VOC oxidation intermediates (OVOCs) via instrumentation and method development.
Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Chemistry Affiliated Faculty Member of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Elsie M. Sunderland is the Gordon McKay Professor Environmental Chemistry at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and in the Department of Environmental Health in the Harvard School of Public Health, and an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. She is a Faculty Associate in the Harvard University Center for the Environment and the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.
Research in the Sunderland Lab focuses on how biogeochemical processes affect the fate, transport and food web bioaccumulation of trace metals and organic chemicals. Her group develops and applies models at a variety of scales ranging from ecosystems and ocean basins (e.g., the Gulf of Maine, the North Pacific and Arctic Oceans) to global applications to characterize how changes in climate and emissions affect human and ecological health, and the potential impacts of regulatory activities. Her group also makes key measurements of chemical concentrations and reaction rates in environmental samples (natural waters, sediments, and aquatic biota) and humans (hair, blood) to parameterize and evaluate environmental models.
Ongoing research is elucidating the biogeochemical cycling of compounds with contrasting physical and chemical properties that can be used to obtain insights into the varying exposure pathways and environmental lifetimes for industrial chemicals. The innovation in this work is to quantitatively analyze the entire exposure pathway for these compounds to identify their properties in air and water (e.g., stability in the atmosphere, photodegradation in water, environmental partitioning behavior) that enhance chemical persistence and ultimate accumulation in biota.
Professor of Environmental Science and Policy Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy
DR. JOHN P. HOLDREN is the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, CoDirector of the School’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy program, Professor of Environmental Science and Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Faculty Affiliate in the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science. He is also Visiting Distinguished Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and Senior Advisor to the President at the Woods Hole Research Center, a pre-eminent scientific think tank focused on the role of the terrestrial biosphere in global climate change. From January 2009 to January 2017, he was President Obama’s Science Advisor and Senate-confirmed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), becoming the longest-serving Science Advisor to the President in the history of the position.... Read more about John P. Holdren
Scot T. Martin is the Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Chemistry at Harvard University, with appointments in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences & the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology; Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering; Director, Harvard Univ. Center for the Environment; Director, Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, HKS; Area Chair for Environmental Science and Engineering
Daniel P. Schrag is the Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology at Harvard University, Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, and Director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
Schrag studies climate and climate change over the broadest range of Earth history. He is particularly interested in how information on climate change from the geologic past can lead to better understanding of anthropogenic climate change in the future. In addition to his work on geochemistry and climatology, Schrag studies energy technology and policy, including carbon capture and storage and low-carbon synthetic fuels.
From 2009-2017, Schrag served on President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Among various honors, he is the recipient of the James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union and a MacArthur Fellowship. Schrag earned a B.S. in geology and geophysics and political science from Yale University and his Ph.D. in geology from the University of California at Berkeley. He came to Harvard in 1997 after teaching at Princeton.
Alissar Yehya, Baha and Walid Bassatne Department of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Energy, AUB, Beirut, Lebanon; Associate, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
Title: Influence of fluid-assisted healing on fault permeability structure
Abstract: Micro-cracks in fault damage zones can heal through diffusive mass transfer controlled by temperature and pressure. The diffusion of pore fluid pressure in fault damage zones...
Alexis Berg (alexis_berg@fas.harvard.edu) is a Research Associate in Prof. Kaighin McColl's group. He is an Earth System scientist whose research interests focus on land-climate interactions, land surface hydrology and global ecosystems. His research relies primarily on the analysis of climate model simulations and global observational datasets. On-going research focuses on understanding the coupled responses of the continental water cycle, land ecosystems and climate to greenhouse warming.
Alexis Berg obtained his PhD in 2011 from Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris, France), working at the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL).
Haller Hall, Geological Museum Room 102, 24 Oxford St.
Dr. Anna M. Michalak is a faculty member in the Department of Global Ecology of the Carnegie Institution for Science and a professor in the Department of Earth System Science at Stanford University. She studies the cycling and emissions of greenhouse gases at urban to global scales – scales directly relevant to informing climate and policy – primarily through the use of atmospheric observations. She also explores climate change impacts on freshwater and coastal water quality via influences on nutrient delivery to, and on conditions within, water bodies. Her approach is focused on the...
Please follow this link to an article about five undergraduate women who spent their summer doing really interesting research on the environment. The article features the work of EPS concentrator Maya Chung and the research that she did at Scripps on sea ice loss in the Antarctic.
Please follow this link to an in-depth article in Harvard Magazine called "The Plastic Earth" featuring the research of Jerry Mitrovica on the nature of the shape of Earth, its rate of rotation, and the relationship to melting ice sheets and rising sea levels. Very interesting and informative article!
Please follow this link to an interesting KPBS article featuring the work of renowned Earth scientist Walter Munk and our own Jerry Mitrovica discussing how rising sea levels actually make the days a bit longer by slowing the Earth's rotation. A case of contemporary research validating and confirming the ideas of the wonderful minds that preceded our work.
Please follow this link to a Harvard Gazette article "A Read on Seawater Sulfate" featuring the research of Dave Johnston's group. Quoting from the article "The ocean is often depicted as teeming with life, from crustaceans and fish to whales and other mammals, but in fact large swaths of it are virtual deserts, populated only by bacteria and a handful of particularly hardy species." Along with...
