State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

faculty profiles18

  • Faculty Profile: Robert Cook

    Faculty Profile: Robert Cook

    For Robert Cook, an adjunct professor in the MPA in Environmental Science program, teaching allows him to share his unique experiences in veterinary medicine and conservation research with students as they delve into public policy legislation in the Workshop in Applied Earth Systems Management.

  • Authors of Clean Air Act to Teach New Law Class

    Authors of Clean Air Act to Teach New Law Class

    In the 1970s, Congress enacted a series of environmental laws that defined the direction and character of environmental policy. This fall, the writers of that legislation will teach a new class at Columbia dedicated to the process that led to these seminal laws.

  • Faculty Profile: Richard Plunz

    Faculty Profile: Richard Plunz

    Richard Plunz is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on housing and urban development. As director of the Urban Design Lab at the Earth Institute, Plunz addresses the challenges of contemporary urban life, from sustainable urban infrastructure to the myriad developmental factors of the contemporary city. In addition to his role at the Earth…

  • Faculty Profile: Robin Bell

    Faculty Profile: Robin Bell

    For twenty years, Robin Elizabeth Bell has worked alongside a team of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory geophysics senior scientists and engineers to coordinate nine major aero-geophysical expeditions to Antarctica and Greenland in order to study ice sheet collapse. On these adventures, Bell’s discoveries have included a volcano beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet, several large lakes…

  • Faculty Profile: Scott Barrett

    Faculty Profile: Scott Barrett

    Scott Barrett, the first Lenfest-Earth Institute Professor of Natural Resource Economics, remembers the exact day when he became interested in researching and creating theoretical models about major issues that require global cooperation for their resolution. It was September 17, 1987, the day of the adoption of the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty designed to protect…

  • Faculty Profile: Pedro A. Sanchez

    Faculty Profile: Pedro A. Sanchez

    Pedro Sanchez attributes the roots of his life’s work in soil sciences to the fact that he always liked to “play with dirt.” That boyhood pastime was nurtured by the fact that his family owned a fertilizer blending business in Cuba, and it eventually led Sanchez to become a world-renowned soil scientist. He is now…

  • Faculty Profile: Peter Coleman

    Faculty Profile: Peter Coleman

    Peter Coleman, Co-Executive Director of the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity (AC4), created four short and engaging videos about intractable conflicts for AC4, an interdisciplinary research consortium led by Coleman and housed at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. To watch Coleman’s comfortable and dynamic on-camera performance, you might think that he was an…

  • Faculty Profile: Rohit Aggarwala

    Faculty Profile: Rohit Aggarwala

    MPA in Environmental Science and Policy (MPA-ESP) faculty member Rohit “Rit” Aggarwala works on cities, transportation, and the environment, from the perspectives of formal public official, policy expert, and historian. In addition to his position at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Rit is the Special Advisor to the Chair of the C40…

  • Faculty Profile: Phil LaRocco

    Faculty Profile: Phil LaRocco

    MS in Sustainability Management faculty member Phil LaRocco spent twenty years with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, ending his career there as the Director of World Trade and Economic Development. In 1990, he founded E+Co, a non-profit investor in over two hundred energy enterprises in over twenty developing countries, with offices…

Composite banner with modern building at night and portrait of Dean Alexis Abramson that reads "Science for the Planet"

By studying thousands of buildings and analyzing their electricity use, Columbia Climate School Dean Alexis Abramson has been able to uncover ways to significantly cut energy consumption and emissions. Watch the Video: “Engineering a Cooler Future Through Smarter Buildings

  • Faculty Profile: Robert Cook

    Faculty Profile: Robert Cook

    For Robert Cook, an adjunct professor in the MPA in Environmental Science program, teaching allows him to share his unique experiences in veterinary medicine and conservation research with students as they delve into public policy legislation in the Workshop in Applied Earth Systems Management.

  • Authors of Clean Air Act to Teach New Law Class

    Authors of Clean Air Act to Teach New Law Class

    In the 1970s, Congress enacted a series of environmental laws that defined the direction and character of environmental policy. This fall, the writers of that legislation will teach a new class at Columbia dedicated to the process that led to these seminal laws.

  • Faculty Profile: Richard Plunz

    Faculty Profile: Richard Plunz

    Richard Plunz is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on housing and urban development. As director of the Urban Design Lab at the Earth Institute, Plunz addresses the challenges of contemporary urban life, from sustainable urban infrastructure to the myriad developmental factors of the contemporary city. In addition to his role at the Earth…

  • Faculty Profile: Robin Bell

    Faculty Profile: Robin Bell

    For twenty years, Robin Elizabeth Bell has worked alongside a team of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory geophysics senior scientists and engineers to coordinate nine major aero-geophysical expeditions to Antarctica and Greenland in order to study ice sheet collapse. On these adventures, Bell’s discoveries have included a volcano beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet, several large lakes…

  • Faculty Profile: Scott Barrett

    Faculty Profile: Scott Barrett

    Scott Barrett, the first Lenfest-Earth Institute Professor of Natural Resource Economics, remembers the exact day when he became interested in researching and creating theoretical models about major issues that require global cooperation for their resolution. It was September 17, 1987, the day of the adoption of the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty designed to protect…

  • Faculty Profile: Pedro A. Sanchez

    Faculty Profile: Pedro A. Sanchez

    Pedro Sanchez attributes the roots of his life’s work in soil sciences to the fact that he always liked to “play with dirt.” That boyhood pastime was nurtured by the fact that his family owned a fertilizer blending business in Cuba, and it eventually led Sanchez to become a world-renowned soil scientist. He is now…

  • Faculty Profile: Peter Coleman

    Faculty Profile: Peter Coleman

    Peter Coleman, Co-Executive Director of the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity (AC4), created four short and engaging videos about intractable conflicts for AC4, an interdisciplinary research consortium led by Coleman and housed at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. To watch Coleman’s comfortable and dynamic on-camera performance, you might think that he was an…

  • Faculty Profile: Rohit Aggarwala

    Faculty Profile: Rohit Aggarwala

    MPA in Environmental Science and Policy (MPA-ESP) faculty member Rohit “Rit” Aggarwala works on cities, transportation, and the environment, from the perspectives of formal public official, policy expert, and historian. In addition to his position at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Rit is the Special Advisor to the Chair of the C40…

  • Faculty Profile: Phil LaRocco

    Faculty Profile: Phil LaRocco

    MS in Sustainability Management faculty member Phil LaRocco spent twenty years with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, ending his career there as the Director of World Trade and Economic Development. In 1990, he founded E+Co, a non-profit investor in over two hundred energy enterprises in over twenty developing countries, with offices…