Gruppi is a biologist with a strong experience in lab work. After several years spent in the field of biochemical and biomedical research, he started his career transition into the Conservation Biology. Gruppi joined the Smith’s team in July 2018 and is working on DNA and ancient DNA of several bird species included in the Bird Genoscape Project. The Bird Genoscape Project focuses on mapping the migratory routes of 100 species of migratory songbirds. Gruppi is particularly interested in exploring and harnessing the advantages of Next Generation Sequencing tools and genomics techniques for the conservation of wild animal populations.
Liz Koslov
Liz Koslov is Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Environment and Sustainability, and Sociology at UCLA. Her research brings an interdisciplinary ethnographic approach to analyzing the politics of urban climate change adaptation, particularly debates over how to respond to sea-level rise, flooding, and wildfire. At UCLA she teaches on climate change through the lens of the built environment, the social life of sea-level rise, and environmental and climate justice.
Much of Dr. Koslov’s work critically examines the idea and process of “managed retreat” from high-risk areas. She is writing a book, Retreat: Moving to Higher Ground in a Climate-Changed City, that follows homeowners in Staten Island, New York, who organized to seek buyouts after Hurricane Sandy that would permanently demolish portions of their neighborhoods. With funding from the National Science Foundation, she leads a collaborative project on the intersection of managed retreat and wildfire (see also this New York Times guest essay). Additional interests include the shifting meanings of urban natures, the politics of risk mapping, and media and climate change.
Before coming to UCLA, Dr. Koslov was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities and Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT. She received a PhD in Media, Culture, and Communication from NYU, where she was affiliated with the Institute for Public Knowledge and the Superstorm Research Lab, a mutual-aid research collective studying climate change, disaster, inequality, and urban politics. She holds an MSc in Culture and Society from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA in Communication and Spanish and Latin American Literatures from the George Washington University.
William Boyd
William Boyd is Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law and Professor at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.
Boyd was previously Professor of Law and John H. Schultz Energy Law Fellow at University of Colorado Boulder School of Law. His primary research and teaching interests are in energy law and regulation, climate change law and policy, and environmental law. Much of his recent scholarship has been motivated by two related concerns: (1) how particular ways of thinking have structured the manner in which problems are framed in energy and environmental law and, in turn, how they have shaped specific regulatory responses; and (2) how particular forms of energy and environmental governance are emerging in the context of a plural, fragmented and increasingly global set of institutions and actors.
Professor Boyd also has longstanding interests and experience in interdisciplinary field-based research on resource use and environmental change. He is particularly interested in the political economy of natural resource industries and the contemporary global land question in the context of a deepening climate emergency.
Professor Boyd continues to be actively involved in climate, energy, and environmental policy matters at multiple levels of governance. Since 2009, he has served as the Project Lead for the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF), a unique subnational collaboration of 38 states and provinces from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Spain, and the United States that is working to develop regulatory frameworks to reduce emissions from deforestation and land use. Boyd is also the founding Director of the Laboratory for Energy & Environmental Policy innovation (LEEP), a policy innovation lab based in Boulder, Colorado that works with partners around the world to develop and support real-time policy experiments, establish robust networks for learning and exchange, and contribute to effective and durable policy outcomes.
Professor Boyd received his B.A. from University of North Carolina, where he was a Morehead Scholar, his M.A. and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group, and his J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he served as Articles Editor of the Stanford Law Review. After law school, Boyd clerked for the Honorable Diana Gribbon Motz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. He then served as American Association for the Advancement of Science Congressional Science Fellow and Counsel on the Democratic minority staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, and practiced energy, environmental, and climate change law with the firm of Covington & Burling, LLP in Washington D.C.
Professor Boyd’s recent scholarship has appeared in UCLA Law Review, Ecology Law Quarterly, and the Yale Journal on Regulation among others. His 2015 book The Slain Wood: Papermaking and its Environmental Consequences in the American South was awarded the 2016 Edelstein Prize by the Society for the History of Technology.
A Note to Prospective Graduate Students
I am always interested in working with talented, motivated, and hard-working undergraduate and graduate students.
If you are considering applying to the IoES Ph.D. program and are interested in working with me, please send me an email with
- CV or resume,
- 1-2 page statement of interest, which indicates: why you want to pursue a Ph.D. in IoES; why my research group would be a good fit; the sorts of research questions and topics you are interested in working on; and relevant experience,
- Copies of any publications (e.g. papers, posters, reports) you have authored or co-authored.
Laurent Pilon
- Biophotonics for biomedical applications
- Photobiological processes for energy applications
- Materials
- Electrochemistry
Chad Thackeray
My research is primarily focused on reducing uncertainty in model-based projections of future climate change. Climate projections from global climate models exhibit a persistent spread, due to uncertainty in key physical processes. A useful strategy to reduce this spread is the so-called “emergent constraint” approach, where emergent relationships between parameters describing aspects of current and future climate are identified across a collection of global climate models. Observations are then used in conjunction with the model-derived emergent relationship to narrow uncertainty in future climate.
Much of my recent efforts have concerned surface albedo feedbacks as they relate to the Earth’s rapidly changing cryosphere (snow and ice) (Thackeray et al., 2018). These are positive feedback cycles whereby the loss of snow and ice due to recent warming, reduces the albedo (reflectivity) of the Earth’s surface, resulting in greater absorption of solar radiation at the surface, thus enhancing warming and further driving snow/ice melt. I am also interested in better understanding how extreme precipitation will change in a warming world. This research explores the characteristics of a changing hydrologic cycle and the possibility for constraining precipitation extremes.
I joined the Center for Climate Science in September 2017 after obtaining a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr. Chris Fletcher. My graduate research was conducted in close collaboration with Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Canadian Snow and Sea Ice Evolution (CanSISE) Network. This research primarily explored snow albedo feedback in models and satellite-derived observations (Thackeray et al., 2014; Thackeray et al., 2015; Thackeray and Fletcher, 2016), and the sources of uncertainty in future projections of snow cover (Thackeray et al., 2016).
In my current role as Climate Science Lead, I help to oversee the Center’s scientific strategy and the execution of our research.
Sonia Aronson
Sonia Aronson is a fourth year environmental science student with a concentration in conservation biology. She loves learning about the environment and is passionate about helping others understand it better. During the 2018-2019 school year she participated in the Sustainable LA Grand Challenges undergraduate research program and studied restoration plans for the Ballona Wetlands. In the fall of 2019 she spent several months in Costa Rica on a field biology program where she researched hummingbird feeding behavior. She served as a Carbon Neutrality Initiative Ambassador throughout 2020, helping students understand how they can lower their carbon footprints. In her free time she enjoys reading, running, and hiking.
Naomi Goldenson
As an atmospheric scientist, Naomi studies the global patterns of variability and change in temperature, precipitation, and the transport of moisture. She then focuses on the regional climate implications of these patterns on local extremes in precipitation, which affects both water resources and hazards.
Naomi uses computer simulations and observational datasets to help constrain the range of possibility for impacts of climate change at the regional scale. Her doctoral work used a multi-scale global atmospheric simulation to connect large-scale moisture transport with year-to-year variability in snowpack in the western United States. Another component quantified the relative contribution of natural variability, emissions scenario, and model spread to the range of possibility in various regions in western North America, with a focus on how estimates of variability can depend on the ensemble of climate simulations employed.
Naomi has also studied changes to heavy precipitation globally, leveraging large ensembles of GCM simulations to identify regions of greater correspondence between models and historical observations. She is also contributing to a project downscaling CMIP6 GCMs, and developing stress tests for stakeholders based on future scenarios of extreme conditions. Other work focuses on large-scale patterns that may predict how atmospheric rivers will impact the west coast.
Naomi completed her doctorate in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington in 2017, and also holds a M.S. in Geological Sciences from Arizona State University and a B.A. in Physics from Wesleyan University
Adel Essaddam
Adel Essaddam co-invented a technology that aims to disrupt the $110 billion plastic industry and save the world from plastic waste. By 2050, it is estimated that there will be more plastic, by weight, in the ocean than fish. The process Adel helped invent and promotes through LOOP breaks down polyethylene terephthalate (PET) without using heat or pressure, enabling reuse of what would otherwise be considered waste material. Trilingual in English, French and Arabic, Adel leads a department of 11 chemists and holds meetings with partners and clients all over the world. He studied composites material transformation technique and natural sciences at CÉGEP de Saint-Jérôme. His work in partnership with beverage company Evian has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, CNBC and Waste 360.
Kelly Chapman Meyer
Kelly Chapman Meyer, environmental activist and health advocate, is a trustee of the NRDC and co-founder of The American Heart Association Teaching Gardens. She joins her passions to help push forward policies and programs for health and wellness of both the individual and the environment.
Kelly co-founded the Teaching Gardens program as a way to combat the rise of childhood obesity and lifestyle-related illnesses. As an environmental activist she organized the Guinness Book of World’s Record Peace Paddle Out to help raise awareness and funds to protect our oceans. Moreover, as co-founder of the Women’s Cancer Research Fund, Kelly has helped to raise over $40 million for ground-breaking Bio-Marker research. She was a Co-Executive Producer of Heartbeat, a scripted medical drama, which aired on NBC.
She has received a number of honors including: Oprah’s “2010 O Power List,” Huffington Post’s Game Changer 2011 and the 2012 EMA Life Time Achievement Award. A true outdoorswomen, Kelly is an avid surfer, yoga devotee and tri-athlete.
Elizabeth Corr
Elizabeth Corr is the Director of Art Partnerships at NRDC, an international environmental nonprofit organization with over three million members and online activists. She was the first in her family to attend college, where she studied contemporary art, politics and social change. She harnessed that knowledge to create a visionary curatorial position at NRDC, pioneering an innovative platform for thoughtful and sustained collaboration between artists and environmental leaders. Elizabeth’s work curating large-scale public art exhibitions and programming has increased public interest in and awareness of environmental issues facing communities. Elizabeth holds a master’s degree in African Studies, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and gender/women’s studies from University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign. She’s spoken at SXSW and multiple universities. Her work has been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Earther and PRI.
(Profile photo: Birds Watching by Jenny Kendler, NRDC Artist-in-Residence, 2018 | at Storm King Art Center as part of Indicators: Artists on Climate Change | 9ft. x 40 ft. x 1ft.)