Affiliated Faculty

Photo by Jason Rodriguez

In addition to a strong core faculty, students in the M.A. Program in Climate and Society also have the opportunity to interface with an impressive body of affiliated faculty through elective courses, research internships and guest lectures.

Steven A. Cohen
Director, Master of Public Administration Program in Environmental Science and Policy, School of International and Public Affairs; Director, Executive Master of Public Administration Program; Director, Office of Educational Programs of the Earth Institute at Columbia University
Cohen is the author of The Effective Public Manager (1988), and the coauthor of Environmental Regulation through Strategic Planning (1991), Total Quality Management in Government (1993), The New Effective Public Manager (1995), Tools for Innovators: Creative Strategies for Managing Public Sector Organizations (1998), and numerous articles on public management innovation, public ethics, and environmental management. Cohen has taught courses in public management, policy analysis, environmental policy, and management innovation.

Upmanu Lall
Alan & Carol Silberstein Professor Engineering, Department of Earth And Environmental Engineering, Columbia University; Director, Columbia Water Center.; Senor Research Scientist, International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI)
Lall’s research interests include hydro-climate modeling; spatial data analysis and visualization; time series analysis and forecasting; Bayes networks for process modeling and decision making; risk and reliability; and water resource management using climate information.

Vijay Modi
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University
His expertise is in the field of: energy sources and conversion, heat/mass transfer, and fluid mechanics. His current areas of research interest are related to: energy infrastructure, CO2 sequestration (with Prof. Lackner in Earth and Environmental Engineering), fuel cells, distributed sensing/control of flow, and heat transfer

John Mutter
Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, School of International and Public Affaires, Columbia University
Mutter teaches undergraduates about such complex, dynamic Earth systems as earthquakes and climate variations. His graduate students in marine seismology learn how seismic energy is used to understand the Earth’s interior; he also coordinates the natural science component of the Ph.D. in sustainable development. Mutter has two main areas of research. The first is global tectonics using geophysical techniques. He has conducted more than 30 research cruises in all parts of the world including the Arctic and Antarctic, and has authored or co-authored more than 70 articles in scientific journals, as well as many popular publications. He is currently an editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research. Mutter’s second area of research is the relationship between natural systems and human well-being with particular focus on the vulnerability of poor societies to natural variations and extreme conditions. Most recently these studies included examination of Katrina’s impact and that of the 2004 tsunami. He received a B.S. in physics and pure mathematics from the University of Melbourne, Australia, an M.S. in geophysics from the University of Sydney, Australia, and a Ph.D. in marine geophysics from Columbia University.

Cynthia Rosenzweig
Research Scientist, Leader, Climate Impacts Group, Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)
Rosenzweig is an Adjunct Senior Research Scientist at the Columbia University Earth Institute and an Adjunct Professor at Barnard College. A Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy, Rosenzweig’s research focuses on climate variability and change in relation to agriculture, at regional, national, and global scales. She has organized and led interdisciplinary national and international studies in this field, and published over 100 scientific articles and reports. She has developed methods for using remote sensing to identify agricultural areas in the U.S. Corn Belt sensitive to the El Niño Southern Oscillation phenomenon, and analyzed how climate affects crop production, plant diseases and pests, and soils. Rosenzweig is a recipient of a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Christopher Small
Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatori; Adjunct Professor, Department of Earth and Environemtal Sciences, Columbia University
Small’s research interests include urban remote sensing; the marine gravity field; continental physiography, climate, and human population; hypsographic demography; global volcanism and human population; and urban vegetation

Shiv Someshwar
Director, Climate Policy, Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development (CGSD); Senior Adviser for Global Partnerships, International Research Institute for Climate and Society
Someshwar has led numerous multidisciplinary projects that build resilience to climate risks in developing countries. He advises governments on identifying and implementing climate action priorities, and serves as an advisor to UNDP’s Bureau of Crisis Prevention and Recovery to integrate climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction efforts. He has helped develop Columbia University’s graduate program in Climate and Society, and is Adjunct Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs. Previously, he was at the Rockefeller Foundation and at the World Bank. Someshwar received his Ph.D. in environment and public policy from the University of California, Los Angeles, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University.