Dr. Guneet Sandhu is Assistant Director of the Climate Action Accelerator with the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University. Dr. Sandhu has dedicated her career to translating, implementing, and scaling rigorous sustainability and climate research into practical, resilient, and equitable solutions, strategies, tools, and frameworks. She has extensive experience building trust-based relationships, networks, and coalitions with communities, policy makers, private sector, and civil society organizations globally and inclusively engaging stakeholders.
Before joining Harvard University, Dr. Sandhu served as Program Director of Global Center for Climate Change and Transboundary Waters at the University of Michigan and previously was a Transdisciplinary Researcher at the University of Waterloo and a Project Engineer with the nonprofit organization AguaClara Reach. In all these roles, Dr. Sandhu strategically led, managed, and operationalized collaborative transdisciplinary research-to-action programs, initiatives, and partnerships focused on fostering sustainability, climate resilience, adaptation, and water security in complex, multi-institutional, and multi-stakeholder environments.
Dr. Sandhu remains committed to breaking down disciplinary and institutional silos and building transdisciplinary bridges to integrate, catalyze, and scale innovative research into tangible action and impact based solutions for communities, policy makers, private sector, and civil society organizations. As a systems thinker and doer, she is passionate about fostering research-to-action collaboration and reciprocity for an equitable, sustainable, and climate resilient future.
Dr. Sandhu has an interdisciplinary background and holds a Ph.D. and Master’s in Sustainability Management from the University of Waterloo (Canada) alongside a Master of Chemical Engineering from Cornell University (USA).
The Salata Institute
The Salata Institute supports interdisciplinary research that leads to real-world action, including high-risk/high-reward projects by researchers already working in the climate area and new endeavors that make it easier for Harvard scholars, who have not worked on climate problems, to do so. Faculty interested in the Climate Research Clusters program should note an upcoming deadline for concepts on April 1, 2024.