ERG PhD Student Adam Hanbury-Brown was recently awarded funding through NASA’s Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) program, which is designed to support graduate student-designed and performed research projects that advance NASA’s science, technology, and exploration goals.

Following a recent UC Berkeley study showing how the United States can achieve 90% clean electricity by 2035, ERG Professor Lara Kuepper commented on the importance of reducing harmful emissions. This report, featured on The Daily Californian, found that by “prioritizing energy generated from wind, solar and battery storage, decarbonizing electricity at a rapid rate is possible.”

ERG Professor Dan Kammen recently published an article on the San Francisco Chronicle titled “How electric vehicles can help advance social justice”. He praises Lyft’s recent promise of its transition to 100% electric vehicles (EV) on its platform by 2030. Kammen ties the climate victory in with California Public Utilities Commission’s move to protect the often vulnerable employees of the gig economy by considering drivers for ride-hailing companies to be employees in accordance with the state’s AB5 law.

ERG PhD student Ian Bolliger was recently titled part of a research team that published a study “The effect of large-scale anti-contagion policies on the COVID-19 pandemic”. Their research found that the emergency COVID-19 measures prevented more than 500 million infections around the globe.

In a recent Vox article titled “What it means to be anti-racist”, ERG Alumna Malini Ranganathan was quoted on how “the idea of anti-racism has been getting a lot of attention in recent days as Americans around the country rise up against police violence.” The article covers the importance of actively fighting against racism, and acknowledging “our own positions in a white supremacist system.”

ERG Professor Lara Kueppers recently co-authored a research paper titled “Pervasive shifts in forest dynamics in a changing world”. The research focuses on how global warming negatively impacts forests around the world, “resulting in shorter and younger trees with broad impacts on global ecosystems.” Furthermore, the paper was picked up on various media sources, including Forbes, Science, Berkeley Lab, and others. 

ERG Alumnus Daniel Sanchez was recently featured in Breakthroughs, the magazine of the Rausser College of Natural Resources, for his work as a Cooperative Extension specialist. Along with other featured specialists, the article focuses on their work on “tackling climate change’s impacts on Californians.”

“Health of People, Health of Planet and Our Responsibility” is a recently published, fully open-access book that came out of discussions at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences with the Pope and members of the joint Pontifical Academies of Science and Social Science. ERG Professor Dan Kammen contributed his own chapter, “Defeating energy poverty”, which is included in a section on taking action from a scientific basis.

ERG PhD Jess Carney has recently been awarded by the Berkeley Graduate Division an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) Award for her work in Dan Kammen’s Energy & Society. Carney not only acted as Head GSI, but she also worked with Kammen to develop and improve the course. She also took charge of steering the summer Energy & Society online course, which presented its own unique challenges.

ERG professor Dan Kammen and ERG PhD student Valeri Vasquez have recently spoken alongside a live panel of UC Berkeley experts in the live broadcast “Climate Change and COVID-19: Can this crisis shift the paradigm?”.