List of Experts

• Mario Herrero

Mario Herrero
Mario Herrero, professor of sustainable food systems and global change, is studying circular food systems that seek to reduce the more than 30% of food wasted in production and consumption. “Lots of that food can be recycled and repurposed as feed, as fertilizer or as energy,” Herrero said. Managing a dairy farm early in his career, Herrero saw how growing food demand could contribute to deforestation in Latin America, and the need for better planning and incentives. His research since has led him to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, and at Cornell he’s among scholars working to improve crop yields, feeding and management strategies and policy solutions. Important upcoming work, he said, will investigate the “true cost of food” – accounting for its environmental and social costs, potentially through smart pricing systems and revised subsidies. “There’s just so much that ends up in landfills,” Herrero said. “We really need to move towards a more regenerative culture.”
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• Nicholas Sanders

Nicholas Sanders
When discussing environmental regulations, “costs are brought to the forefront as reasons why we shouldn’t take a certain policy action, but benefits are often hidden, because they lie in health gains, mortality avoidance, or protection of a habitat or species,” said economist Nicholas Sanders. Sanders “speaks the language of regulation,” by comparing costs and benefits in dollar values. Among the topics he has studied are the long-term consequences of early-life lead exposure; how acid rain controls impacted agriculture; the interaction between influenza cases and air pollution; and improvements in fetal health attributable to the Clean Air Act. “Economics is not about money or finance – economics is about choice,” he said. “It’s easy to see the cost of making a sacrifice or an investment today, but what do we dodge in 50 years if we make that investment now? I try to bring to light the things that people can’t see, but that we all need and value.”
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Unhealthy air in Seattle, Portland, Southern California amid wildfires, fireworks
• Carla Gomes

Carla Gomes
Computer scientist Carla Gomes has seen excitement about computational sustainability grow dramatically since she helped pioneer the field some 15 years ago. “We showed you can have an impact in the world and in computer science addressing these challenges,” Gomes said. “The questions are so challenging that they do lead to fundamental advances in AI.” As director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability, Gomes has applied AI and machine learning methodologies to predict bird distributions, design grizzly bear conservation corridors, discover clean energy materials and, recently, assess the placement of hydropower dams in the Amazon basin. The research allows policymakers to play “what if” games based on different criteria and scales, Gomes said, and identify harmful outcomes. “AI is changing the world, and the next frontier is AI for science and sustainability,” she said. “What really drives me is addressing meaningful questions, while also advancing AI.”
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AI enables strategic hydropower planning across Amazon basin
• Linda Shi

Linda Shi
City and regional planning expert Linda Shi grew up passionate about the environment, reading Ranger Rick magazines and leading school clubs. Only later did she become aware of deep inequities tied to climate change and adaptation that are now the focus of her research, and a pillar of The 2030 Project. “The people who have contributed the least carbon emissions are likely to experience the greatest impacts,” Shi said. “They’re also the least able to adapt to some of those impacts because of their financial resources, where their housing is and how much political voice they have.” Shi seeks to reveal those vulnerabilities and identify drivers in the areas of land use policy, tax policy, property rights and community engagement, frequently working across disciplines. “It’s only through collaboration across these different points of view,” she said, “that we’re going to come up with new solutions for these difficult challenges.”
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How can we support New York City’s housing cooperatives in adapting to climate change?
• Margaret Frey

Margaret Frey
Fiber scientist Margaret Wilde Frey creates nanofibers that are hundreds of times thinner than a human hair, and studies the way these fibers can remove pathogens from air and water, aid textile biodegradation, and offer cooling on a warming planet. Frey’s fibers can block certain UV wavelengths, and when embedded in umbrellas and clothing or added as a very thin layer on buildings, they provide cooling and UV protection. For 20 years, Frey has studied and engineered nanofibers to filter air and water to remove chemicals and pathogens. These types of nanoparticles are now used in most commercial air filtration devices. Frey also works with the cotton industry to improve biodegradation and minimize waste. “Waste textiles are a huge issue in the environment – there are heaps of waste textiles on coasts in Africa and enormous piles of textiles being burned in South America,” Frey said. “We need to value these materials, value the people who are making them, and value the environmental resources needed to create them.”
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• Maria Cristina Garcia

Maria Cristina Garcia
American Studies professor Maria Cristina Garcia’s research on immigration, refugees and asylum seekers is something that’s always been personal to her, having left Cuba for the USA with her family in the 1960s. “The experience of coming as part of a refugee migration sensitized me to the experience of other refugees,” she said. Her research into the unequal impact of climate change on vulnerable populations is something Garcia hopes will help guide future policy. Governments tend to pigeonhole refugees and asylum seekers into discrete categories, but migration has always been multicausal, Garcia argues, with people often originally displaced by the environmental drivers her research aims to highlight. She believes we should not only focus on ways to mitigate climate change, but also on ways to help populations become resilient to its impacts. Societies of the future will need to share the burden of accommodating displaced people — and not lose faith. “Hope is a discipline,” Garcia said. “It’s very easy to despair, so you have to make a conscious choice to look for reasons to hope.”
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Migration, Forced by Climate Change
• Natalie Mahowald

Natalie Mahowald
From studying volcanoes to observing Earth’s surface from space, atmospheric scientist and Cornell Atkinson Senior Faculty Fellow Natalie Mahowald strives to better understand earth system feedback mechanisms that impact climate change and could improve climate models. Examples include NASA-funded missions investigating the atmospheric movement of volcanic ash and desert dust, including measurements from a science instrument being launched to the International Space Station. “This will help us understand a lot more about how desert dust – an important source of aerosols to the atmosphere – changes the energy budget of the planet,” Mahowald said. “Is it going to cause us to warm more or cool more?” An author of a 2018 U.N. report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, Mahowald draws inspiration from her students working to innovate and implement climate solutions. “It makes me very optimistic that we can solve some of these great challenges,” she said.
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Microplastics’ shape determines how far they travel in the atmosphere
• Phillip Milner

Phillip Milner
Chemist Phillip Milner develops novel strategies to remove greenhouse gases from emission sources and directly from air. One major goal of his lab is to reduce the energy needed to power carbon capture systems, so they can be deployed more efficiently and affordably. Most carbon capture systems in use today employ amines – organic compounds derived from ammonia – but they are toxic, corrosive, volatile, prone to degradation, and energy-intensive. Milner is exploring alternative chemistry for carbon capture. “We’ve seen in the last 10 years a lot of advances in carbon capture technologies, but all of those technologies are based on these amines,” Milner said. A new 2030-funded project will enable Milner and colleagues to create an experimental carbon capture facility at Cornell’s power plant. Scientists from around the world will be able to use the facility to test new carbon capture strategies. “We’re always going to need to capture carbon dioxide. For the rest of human history, we’ll be relying on these technologies, so we need to get them right.”
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Electrified charcoal ‘sponge’ can soak up CO2 directly from air
• Timur Dogan

Timur Dogan
Architect and building scientist Timur Dogan wants to decarbonize our building stock – from Ithaca to Ankara – by developing digital tools that simulate energy demand and urban microclimates. Such tools enable planners to target interventions that can reduce CO2 and save residents money, including weatherizing, adding photovoltaics, and updating HVAC systems. He also assesses the economics of decarbonization. “Owners don’t fully understand how much support is available – some buildings in Ithaca could be retrofitted almost for free, and others would pay off really quickly in reduced energy costs.” However, if not done right, “this can actually backfire.” For example, in some regions replacing gas furnaces with heat pumps might not reduce CO2 emissions if energy grids are not clean enough. “2030 is right around the corner and we have to start transforming buildings now. If we put the right policy measures in place, we can help people transition quickly.”
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To Get to Net Zero, This City Is Making a Map
• Héctor D. Abruña

Héctor D. Abruña
Electrochemist Héctor Abruña’s research team is developing new materials for batteries and hydrogen fuel cells that will be critical to storing renewable energy and enabling more efficient vehicles. He cites recent advances in lithium sulfur batteries and fuel cells that don’t require expensive precious metals. “I feel very positive this will be something that will be viable in the very near future,” he said. Abruña says his proudest achievement is having mentored dozens of doctoral and post-doctoral students now working around the world to advance climate solutions. Significant federal and private investments in hydrogen herald further progress. But Abruña said addressing complex climate challenges will require both new technology and political will, engaging large, multidisciplinary teams that span science and public policy. “Cornell was meant for this kind of challenge,” Abruña said. “It’s almost in our DNA that we’re very collaborative.”
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Carbon-coated nickel enables fuel cell free of precious metals
• Joseph McFadden

Joseph McFadden
Animal scientist Joseph McFadden researches the interactions between nutrition, environment and food animal production. He’s also leading the development of four respiration chambers that measure complete gas exchange to help quantify greenhouse emissions from an animal through the testing of feed ingredients, additives and drugs. It’s only with this holistic approach, McFadden believes, that we can provide transparency while simultaneously accelerating the approval of effective dietary approaches – by reducing methane emissions in the short-term, and by reducing CO2 as a longer-term climate goal. Farms of the future will also need to focus on global solutions. “I’m optimistic that we’ll have dietary approaches to suppress methanogenesis without compromising efficiency. What’s going to be more challenging is identifying solutions to enhance efficiency in underdeveloped countries. Every region is going to require a unique solution,” he said. “Now is the time for us to use our training for the betterment of society.”
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Grants fund study, outreach on sustainable milk production
• Shorna Allred

Shorna Allred
Conservation social scientist Shorna Allred studies global sustainability, conservation and land use decision-making, community resilience, and environmental justice. “Natural disasters, like floods, hurricanes, and heat waves, disproportionately impact low-income communities because of the lack of infrastructure and historical investment in these communities,” Allred said. “We saw this pattern during Hurricane Katrina, during a polar freeze in Texas, and with Flint, Michigan’s water crisis – historical vulnerability and environmental issues cause compounding crises.” From Borneo to Binghamton, Allred facilitates community-based approaches to planning and management. These approaches seek for social equity, economic vitality, enhanced resilience, and improved sustainability. “Communities are not victims,” Allred said. “Communities and their leaders have agency and innovative and grounded solutions to address environmental injustices, so often we just need to recognize, acknowledge, and privilege the knowledge and lived experiences that these leaders bring to these issues.”
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Cornell, DEC team up for green Hudson Valley land planning
• Max Zhang

Max Zhang
Mechanical engineer Max Zhang researches the intersection of energy and the environment. “There are a lot of ambitious goals of where we want to be in 2030. To me, that’s fascinating,” he said. “Everything has to be accelerated, but we have to be thoughtful in how we pursue this transition to sustainable energy. It must be just and equitable… We need to benefit society and leave nobody behind.” The work excites him and his students, who can see the impact of their research quickly because of the rapid movement toward climate solutions. Energy of the future will hopefully be more democratized; Zhang imagines a “highly electrified” society where most people are prosumers, both producers and consumers of electricity. “We’re making progress every day,” said Zhang.
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How extreme weather impacts power grids and the customers who rely on them
• Douglas MacMartin

Douglas MacMartin
Douglas MacMartin worked as an aerospace engineer in the private sector before finding his way to academia, where he studies Sunlight Reflection Methods (SRM). The concept is based on a natural occurrence: when volcanoes erupt, they can emit sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere; the resulting aerosols reflect sunlight and temporarily cool the planet. MacMartin explores the logistics and uncertainties of potentially releasing aerosols in the stratosphere, including where, how much, how they would be delivered, potential weather impacts, and how much cooling could be gained. “I think of SRM kind of like seatbelts: If you are in a car and you know you’ll get into a car accident, you should take your foot off the gas (that’s like cutting CO2 emissions), hit the brakes (that’s like CO2 removal), but you still might want a seatbelt and airbags, too. That’s SRM,” he said. “Future decisions on deployment will be hard, but my hope is to ultimately support informed decisions.”
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Scientists: Slow Antarctica ice melt with sunlight-reflecting particles