Highlights
Fellows are engaged in major initiatives world-wide that they are investing in for the next 5-10 years or longer. Here is a small sample of the kind of work—both internationally and nationally—that fellows are doing as change-agents.
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Read more detailed narratives with teaching notes in Stories.
International Scope
Noelle Selin
Project description: I am working with MIT’s International Policy Laboratory, providing scientific information to inform global policy makers as they implement the Minamata Convention on Mercury. The treaty entered into force in 2017.
Goal: I am hoping to inform the "effectiveness evaluation" of the Minamata Convention, so that the treaty makes progress on addressing the problem of mercury in the environment. Ultimately, I'd like to show that action on mercury has lessened the problem of mercury and its impacts on human and environmental health.
National Scope
Diane Pataki
Project description: I've been working with a group of actors nationally on urban tree planting programs and the way they are implemented in cities across the country. In the last decade, there has been a significant movement to utilize large-scale tree planting and canopy cover goals as a means of solving urban challenges related to pollution, climate change, urban heat island effects, and many other urban environmental and social problems.
Goal: We envision a national partnership of urban planning, design, and forestry professionals and researchers from different disciplines (natural science, social science, and humanities) to co-create a research agenda and envision the next generation of governance models and decision-making tools to envision, plan, and manage trees as urban infrastructure.
Leadership Positions within Universities
Today more than half of the 213 fellows trained since 1999 are in leadership positions in North American universities and highly regarded environmental institutions.