Speakers

Dorit Aviv

Weitzman School of Design Assistant Professor of Architecture

Dorit Aviv, PhD, AIA is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design, where she directs the Thermal Architecture Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory focused on the intersection of thermodynamics, architectural design, and material science. Her work examines how architectural materials and forms can impact airflows, energy interactions, and human health. She is a licensed architect and holds a PhD in architectural technology from Princeton University. Her current projects include a distributed environmental sensing network, development of radiative cooling for hot-humid climates, a combined evaporative and radiative cooling prototype for desert climate, and indoor environmental quality control and assessment technologies.

Guy Grossman

David M. Knott Professor of Global Politics and International Relations Penn Arts & Sciences, Political Science Dept.

Guy Grossman, PhD, the David M. Knott Professor of Global Politics and International Relations at the political science department at the University of Pennsylvania. His research is in applied political economy, with a substantive focus on governance, migration and forced displacement, human trafficking, and conflict processes, (mostly) in the context of developing countries. Grossman is the the founder and co-director of Penn’s Development Research Initiative (PDRI-DevLab), launched in 2020. At Penn, he is also a Faculty Affiliate at The Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Immigration Study (CSERI), a member of Wharton’s Lauder Graduate Group in International Studies, and an advisory board member of the Penn Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics.

Scott Moore

Practice Professor of Political Science, Director of China Programs and Strategic Initiatives, Penn Global Penn Arts & Sciences, Political Science Dept.

Scott Moore, PhD, is Practice Professor of Political Science, Director of China Programs and Strategic Initiatives, and Senior Advisor to The Water Center at Penn at the University of Pennsylvania. His primary research interests center on China, climate change, and security. Other research interests and teaching include water security and China’s role in the biotechnology sector. Dr. Moore’s first book, Subnational Hydropolitics: Conflict, Cooperation, and Institution-Building in Shared River Basins (Oxford University Press, 2018), examines how climate change and other pressures affect the likelihood of conflict over water within countries. His latest, China’s Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology are Reshaping China’s Rise and the World’s Future (Oxford University Press, 2022), explores how shared ecological and technological challenges force us to re-envision China’s rise and its role in the world.

As Director of China Programs and Strategic Initiatives at Penn, Dr. Moore directs Penn Global’s four research and engagement fund programs, including those designed to support faculty-led projects in China, India, and Africa, as well as its At-Risk Scholars Program.

Leigh Stearns

Professor, Graduate Chair Penn Arts & Sciences, Dept of Earth & Environmental Science

Leigh Sterns, PhD, is interested in how a changing climate impacts the cryosphere, and the risks associated with those changes. Her current research focuses on ice sheet dynamics and sea level rise, shifts in iceberg and sea ice distributions in Arctic shipping lanes, and glacier loss and water availability at low latitudes. She relies on a combination of satellite remote sensing, machine learning, and geophysical instrumentation to better understand these systems and parameterize their changes into numerical models.

Michael Weisberg

Bess W. Heyman President's Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Deputy Director of Perry World House School of Arts and Sciences

A climate diplomat, philosopher of science, climate policy researcher, and experienced academic leader, he has worked to negotiate and achieve collective outcomes in the complex landscape of climate, ocean, and development issues at the highest levels of international diplomacy.

An expert on the climate needs of small island developing states, Weisberg currently serves as senior advisor to Jamaica's Permanent Representative to the United Nations and as an advisor to the Fiji and Palau negotiating teams at COP. Weisberg was a leading voice in the development of the "mosaic of solutions" for addressing loss and damage due to the adverse impacts of climate change, which led to major breakthroughs on the topic at COP27 and COP28. This framework was developed in collaboration with the Maldivian Government and the International Peace Institute, where he is a Non-resident Senior Advisor. 

Weisberg serves as editor-in-chief of Biology and Philosophy and director of the Galápagos Education and Research Alliance. He is the author of Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World, co-author of the landmark photographic study Galápagos: Life in Motion, and a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Jennifer Wilcox

School of Engineering and Applied Science, Kleinman Center for Energy Policy Presidential Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Energy Policy

Jennifer Wilcox is Presidential Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, with a home at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. At Penn, she oversees the Clean Energy Conversions Lab.

Wilcox is also a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, where she leverages her expertise to help accelerate policy support and investments in research, development, and deployment of industrial decarbonization and carbon removal solutions in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. 

Most recently, Wilcox served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the Department of Energy. Before coming to Penn, she was the James H. Manning Chaired Professor of Chemical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.