Alumni - Student
-
Aguirre, Jonathan (‘17 - ‘19)
Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures
Jonathan C. Aguirre is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. He studies environmental history, literature, and politics in the Andes region of South America focusing on mechanisms of land dispossession formulated during the progressive cycle of politics of the 21st century. He is particularly interested in the state violence and erasure economies that occur in the construction of utopian ecological imaginaries. In addition, he studies environmental racism and inequality in the United States concentrating specifically on the representation of pollution-induced diseases in Latinx literature and film.
-
Ai, Xuyuan (Ellen) (‘18 - ‘20)
Geosciences
Ai is based in the Department of Geosciences, where she studies the changes in biogeochemical conditions in the Southern Ocean through glacial-interglacial climate cycles during the past 450,000 years, with a focus on surface-nutrient consumption by phytoplankton. She is advised by Daniel Sigman, the Dusenbury Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences and professor of geosciences.
-
Alkon, Meir (‘17 - ‘19)
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Homepage: www.meiralkon.com
Meir is a joint PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. A core theme of his research is the domestic politics of energy and the environment in large developing countries, specifically China and India, and their implications for climate change and global environmental governance. This research has spanned topics including India’s groundwater access and use; the political behavior basis of support for energy subsidies; the political economy of rural electrification programs; the public opinion consequences of urban air pollution; and the intergovernmental bargaining behind coal-fired and renewable power in China. His work in these areas combines insights from international and comparative political economy with an interdisciplinary approach.
-
Anand, Shashank (‘20 - ‘22)
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Anand focuses his research on understanding the emergence of complex networks in natural ecosystems, such as drainage networks in the landscape, xylem-phloem networks in the plant, etc. He is particularly interested in analyzing the evolution and organization of topographic features and their effects on sediment and water transport, as well as ecosystem regulation. His adviser is Amilcare Porporato, the Thomas J. Wu ’94 Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the High Meadows Environmental Institute.
-
Anderson, Rachel (‘20 - ‘22)
Economics
Anderson’s research aims to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of renewable energy policy for decarbonizing the electricity sector. In particular, Anderson studies how federal and state incentive programs interact with electricity market design to influence where wind and solar energy investment occurs in the United States.
-
Azar, Jose (‘09 - ‘12)
Economics
José’s research interest lies in studying the incentives to increase the adoption of clean energy energy-saving technology by the general public. His current research is focused on using the tools of time series econometrics to study the joint dynamics of oil prices and public interest in electric cars and other alternative technologies in the transportation sector.
-
Baker, Rachel (‘15 - ‘17)
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Rachel’s research combines climate and socioeconomic data to investigate how climate affects livelihoods in developing countries. In particular she is interested in how climactic variations affect employment and migration in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her research hopes to inform predictions regarding the future impact of climate change in this region. Rachel has an undergraduate degree in physics and a master’s in applied mathematics from Cambridge University.
-
Baldwin, Jane (‘15 - ‘16)
Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
Jane studies jointly between Princeton’s Atmospheric and Oceanic Science program and NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, where she is advised by Dr. Gabriel Vecchi. In her research, she uses a combination of dynamical climate models and atmospheric observations to elucidate the ties between global and regional climate, and move towards useful predictions of climate change at regional levels. Inspired by previous study in China and interests in environmental policy and history, she is currently studying the extratropical arid regions that stretch across interior Asia. She hopes to improve understanding of the controls on this region’s basic climate, as a prerequisite to examining its environmental change.
-
Batterman, Sarah (‘11 - ‘13)
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Sarah studies nutrient limitation on primary productivity in terrestrial ecosystems. Her work focuses on symbiotic nitrogen fixation, what controls its prevalence, and how patterns of fixation change across heterogeneous tropical forests. She finds symbiotic fixation particularly fascinating not only because plants can use it to bypass the soil to get essential nitrogen and build up nitrogen in the ecosystem, but also because it could help tropical forests store more carbon as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise. This would offset some of the world’s carbon emissions.
-
Bennett, Joshua (‘13 - ‘14)
English
Joshua’s academic interest include, but are not limited to, black studies, disability theory, performance, and eco-criticism. He is interested in the way 20th century African American writers employ ecological metaphor as a means of theorizing black ontology, or, in other words, how these authors think about black nature writing as part of an ongoing conversation with various, often deeply problematic, kinds of scientific and philosophical writing about the nature of blackness and black social life.
-
Benveniste, Hélène (‘18 - ‘20)
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Benveniste is in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs’ Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP). Her research focuses on quantifying economic impacts of climate change on human-migration patterns using integrated assessment models.
-
Bilgir, Ozlem (‘10 - ‘11)
Electrical Engineering
Ozlem’s research focuses on decreasing the energy consumption and the carbon footprint of Data Centers. Data Centers’ energy consumption was around 60billion kWh in 2006 and this amount will be doubled between 2006 and 2011. Moreover, data centers cause even more carbon emissions than some countries. By using the resources efficiently, the energy consumption and the carbon emission can be reduced. Currently, Ozlem is working on the Chip Multiprocessor (CMP) technologies and exploring alternative ways to manage the cores in a way to contribute to the reduction in the energy consumption.
-
Blaisdell-Pijuan, Paris (‘20 - ‘22)
Electrical Engineering
Blaisdell-Pijuan works in the Gmachl Group in the Department of Electrical Engineering. His research focuses on utilization of infrared light to efficiently promote chemical reactions by selectively driving reactants over chemical barriers with a laser. Currently, he is targeting the reaction of ammonia degradation for hydrogen storage applications.
-
Bozym, David (D.J.) (‘12 - ‘14)
Chemical and Biological Engineering
D.J.’s research is focused on tackling a piece of the energy storage problem by improving the energy density of ultracapacitors, electronic devices which store energy in the form of static charge. To accomplish this, he aims to engineer high surface area electrodes using functionalized graphene sheets (FGSs), atomic planes of defective carbon lattices, and ionic liquids, room temperature liquid salts. On the science side, he is working to understand how the interfacial chemistry of FGSs influences their complex assembly. His research involves material synthesis, electrode processing and electrochemical characterization.
-
Brunner, Claudia (‘19 - ‘21)
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
