Q: What about IBES attracted your attention?

In most places, university researchers have precious few opportunities to advance scholarship outside the boundaries of their discipline, because of the ways that academic departments, academic journals and grant funding are structured. 

IBES is a major exception to that rule. Cross-disciplinary collaboration isn’t a new priority at IBES; it’s already part of the fabric of the institute. There are so many long-running research projects here that cut across disciplines and extend beyond the University, and they’re informing policies at the local, national and international levels.

I think those collaborations and partnerships are going to be key to solving many of today’s most pressing challenges, including climate change. These problems require systems-level thinking about solutions, and they require people of all backgrounds and all professions to come together and contribute their diverse perspectives and tools. 

Q: How can collaboration across disciplines help solve some of the most pressing climate issues people face today?

I think every single extreme weather-related disaster event we’ve seen this summer — the floods in Kentucky, the fires in California, the record heat in Europe — is an example of a systems failure. Let’s be blunt about it: We’ve known for decades that these disasters would be coming to our doorstep, and we haven’t worked together in earnest to leverage that knowledge to keep communities safe. We’re now playing catch-up to reckon with our climate reality, which means that now, more than ever, we need all hands on deck to solve these problems.

Take urban heat waves, for example. Recently, the town of Starkville, Mississippi, recorded a heat index of 140 degrees Fahrenheit due to a combination of humidity, sun and lack of wind. These temperatures sound like science fiction, but they’re real, and tragically, they’re causing fatalities. 

What would it take to keep communities like Starkville safe? It would take revised emergency planning and response protocols, for one. It would take a deep dive into household-level data to find and protect people who are the most vulnerable in heat waves, including people who have no air conditioning, the elderly and people with underlying health conditions like cardiovascular disease. It would take partnerships between cities and community organizations to offer more public cooling centers, distribute air conditioning units to the most vulnerable, and make sure everyone knows how to stay safe during a heat emergency, including knowing the signs of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. 

And that’s only the beginning. We also need to think about how we can engineer our cities to stay cool with more green spaces, more tree canopy, more white roofs and fewer blacktops. We need to think about implementing energy systems that put less stress on the power grid in the summertime. We need to think about how to leverage new cooling technologies that can keep us comfortable while also shrinking our carbon footprint.

That one example illustrates how almost every department at Brown could be a part of the solution. We need designers, engineers, political scientists, urban planners, sociologists, doctors and public health experts — I could go on.

Q: What are your long-term plans for IBES?

One of my core goals for IBES is to create knowledge where we need it the most and translate that knowledge into impact. That will involve bringing together large teams of researchers and community partners to focus on identifying and filling knowledge gaps that can unlock durable, replicable solutions to the systems-level challenges of our time. Traditional research grants don’t typically allow for large-scale partnerships like this, so it’s my job to seek out a diverse range of funding channels, from private philanthropy to corporations and foundations to newly available opportunities with federal funding.

I’m also excited to get students from across Brown more involved in our educational offerings, our research and our partnerships. For years, students at IBES have worked side-by-side with faculty on research anchored in the environmental and social sciences. I want students to know that they don’t need to concentrate in environmental studies to be a part of our work — because, as with the urban heat example we just discussed, we need the contributions of people from all backgrounds and disciplines in order to solve this crisis. Students can play a crucial role in helping us tackle climate change-related issues in our own backyard like extreme heat, coastal flooding and sea level rise, or accelerating a just transition to low-carbon, resilient energy systems. That hands-on experience will, I hope, help students lead on climate wherever they land next, whether it’s in law, science, entrepreneurship or something else entirely. 

I’m also thinking about how to integrate more experiential learning into our curriculum. Learning by doing is both fun and important for students; they get to hone skills, network and learn from people outside of College Hill. I want to offer students more opportunities to do research projects with community partners in their classes, to connect with people from the greater Providence area and hear about their experiences, to connect students to a diverse set of internships and employment opportunities in the local area, where they can help move the needle across a broad landscape of climate solutions.

Finally, I want to stress that diversity, equity and justice will continue to be a fundamental part of all the work we do at IBES. To my mind, climate and environmental issues are also justice and equity issues – if proposed solutions to the climate challenge don’t support the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in our communities, they are not scalable and durable solutions. Brown has a venerable history of advancing diversity, equity and justice, and I hope to use its Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan to guide all that IBES does.