Climate and Sustainability Scholars Seminars are dedicated to climate, sustainability, and environmental work done by Harvard students and fellows. Its goal is to embrace the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability research that can’t be confined to a single Harvard school and help like-minded people connect with each other. In Spring 2025, we will meet monthly at the Harvard University Center for the Environment located at 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge. In each session, we will have a few brief talks from different disciplines and perspectives followed by a vegan dinner and discussion. Meeting dates are scheduled as follows: 

• Tuesday @ 6 PM, February 4 

• Tuesday @ 6 PM, March 4 

• Tuesday @ 6 PM, April 15 

Call for Speakers

This semester we are trying a new format: to facilitate community connections, we’ll have monthly evening seminars with 3-5 brief talks from different disciplines and perspectives in the first hour followed by a community dinner and open discussion.  

We are looking for graduate students, postdocs, and fellows who can engage a multidisciplinary audience of peers with a 12-minute short talk for a multidisciplinary audience (approximately 10 min talk+2 min discussion) regarding their CSE-related research or work at Harvard.  

We ask you to please keep your slide deck to about 5 slides and start with introducing yourself, your program at Harvard, and your field. 

We’ll continue accepting applications on a rolling basis while the speaker slots last! If you don’t hear back within a week, please email us! 

Thank you for considering this opportunity, and we are looking forward to having you as part of our series! 
 

Questions? Mauro Morabito mauromorabito@hks.harvard.edu, Oksana Makarova, oksana_makarova@g.harvard.edu, James Mixon jamesmixon@hds.harvard.edu 

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Upcoming Events

February 4th | 6-8 pm

HUCE 429, 26 Oxford Street, 4th Floor of Museum of Comparative Zoology

1. Sakiko Isomichi, GSD, Master’s student in Landscape Architecture

Landscape Design

Title: Challenges to Native Plants in Residential Landscapes

This study examines the challenges to planting native species in residential landscapes on Martha’s Vineyard through interviews, observations, and online survey.

To address biodiversity crisis in a changing climate, a number of conservation organizations, from the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources to non-profit Native Plant Trust, promote native plants in residential landscapes. Yet American residential landscapes continue to be predominated with the species from other countries. This study examines the reasons behind this trend through interviews, observations, and online survey conducted on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of the southeastern Massachusetts known for its unique ecologies. In conversations with residents, landscapers, and conservationists, the study investigates the tension between popular culture, biodiversity crisis, and climate change with the category of native plants in flux.

2. Oksana Makarova, SEAS/MIT, PhD Candidate in Engineering Sciences  

Sustainability/Circular Economy

Title: Assessing the Scalability of US Recycling: The Case of Flexible Plastic Packaging

Economic, technological, and material science reasons behind why you can’t put plastic bags and wraps into recycling bin and what needs to happen to change it.

Used films, such as wraps, bags, and pouches, represent up to half of the US plastic packaging. However, scalable recycling systems are limited to rigid plastics, so most flexibles are destined for landfills and incinerators. In this work, we follow the circular economy framework to map the entire United States FPP value chain, including the end-use applications of potential recycled products. Then, we assess the economic and environmental costs of the country-wide scale-up of mechanical and chemical recycling for flexibles. We find that large-scale recycling of used FPP in the US in the business-as-usual system is impractical because the heterogeneous nature of post-consumer film precludes viable local end markets. We advocate that avoiding FPP material loss requires a major systematic change, starting with collecting detailed primary data on the current system and harmonizing product designs.

3. Bhuvan Ravindran, HKS, Graduate Student

Title: Transitioning to Nature Positive Economies: Developments, challenges, and opportunities

Moving beyond the net-zero energy transition, what does it mean and what will it take to transition into a nature surplus world?

Negotiations at COP 16 in Cali, Colombia last year emphasized the importance of policy coherence between climate and biodiversity heading into COP30 in Brazil. How will this emerging stream of ‘nature positive’ action interact with the ‘net zero’ energy transition? We will unpack this question using insights from recent environmental negotiations and policies adopted in the public and private sectors.

Past Events

Fall ’24

Week 1 | September 11

Greening the Black Gold: Transforming Saudi Arabia’s Oil-Driven Economy Through Sustainable Energy Innovations

Noura Mansouri, HKS, MPA

Modeling Tropical Islands in Climate Models

Nathanael Wong, GSAS, PhD Candidate in Earth and Planetary Sciences, GSAS 

Week 2 | September 17

Developing the Green AI Index: A Framework for Sustainable Computing

Jerry Huang, GSAS, MS in Computer Science

Assessing the Scalability of US Recycling: The Case of Flexible Plastic Packaging

Oksana Makarova, GSAS/MIT, PhD Candidate in Engineering and Applied Sciences

Week 3 | September 25

Politics of Water Shortages in Chile

Magdalena Larreboure, Ph.D Candidate in Public Policy, GSAS

AI and the Energy Revolution

Rowen VonPlagenhoef, Lemann Program Fellow, FAS

Week 4 | October 1

Breaking the mould- Understanding opportunities for off-grid sector in West Africa 

Manali Jain, HKS, MPP

Week 5 | October 9

Inefficient Policies in the Green Transition

Juan Dodyk, GSAS, PhD student in Government

Week 6 | October 15

The role of root exudation in the global carbon cycle

Nikhil Chari, GSAS, PhD student in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

Week 7 | October 23

Promoting Climate Justice Through Greening Curriculum

Ranjitsinh Disale, GSE, MS

Week 8 | October 29

Confessions from a former Oil and Gas professional

Mohamed Abdelgaleel, HKS, MidCareer-MPA, policy director at African Caucus

Week 9 | November 6

COP29 Negotiations: What to Expect and Why It Matters

Alice Soewito, HBS and HKS, Joint MPP-MBA

Week 10 | November 12 at noon

Energy Transitions in Mexico

Santiago Creuheras, HKS, Weatherhead Fellow/Visiting Scholar

Week 11 | November 20 at 6 pm

Inequality in outdoor occupational exposure to heat waves in India

Arpit Shah, FAS, Postdoctoral Research Scholar

Assessing the Scalability of US Recycling: The Case of Flexible Plastic Packaging

Oksana Makarova, SEAS/MIT, PhD Candidate in Engineering Sciences  

Spring ’24

Week 1 | February 7

“What is the cheapest way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Lessons from carbon abatement costs” with Roxana Shafiee, Environmental Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment

Week 2 | February 15

“Project of Hope: Indigenous Land Recovery & Ecological Restoration” with Leyla Uysal, Harvard GSD

Week 3 | February 21

A dual talk on transformative sustainability strategies featuring Lingling Jiang, founder of Intrapreneurs with Purpose (IWP) and an MPA student at HKS, and Elena Indar Athwal, LL.M. Candidate in International Environmental & Energy Law at HLS.

Week 4 | February 29

“The role of Substantive Youth Participation and Representation in Advancing Climate Change Policies” with Neringa Tumenaite, Ph.D. Candidate, SOAS University of London, Fulbright Schuman Fellow at FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, Harvard University

“Data-driven lessons from accessing international forest carbon funding for Costa Rica and Côte d’Ivoire” with Rafael Monge, Mid-Career Master’s in Public Administration student, Harvard Kennedy School, Former Director of the National Center of Geoenvironmental Information of the Ministry of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica

Week 5 | March 6

“Potential threats to ocean biodiversity in the transition to renewable energy” with Jacqueline Evans, an MC-MPA 2024 student at the Harvard Kennedy School from the Cook Islands in the Pacific

Week 6 | March 20

“Geospatial Machine Learning: Data-focused algorithm design, development, and evaluation” with Esther Rolf, a postdoctoral fellow with the Harvard Data Science Initiative and the Center for Research on Computation and Society

“Isotopes as a Tool to Investigate Organic Aerosol Emissions and Atmospheric Oxidation Pathways” with Daniel Crocker, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Week 7 | March 28

“From Meat to Greens: Transforming Taiwanese Diets for a Sustainable Future” with Sarah Wang
“Modeling Nutrition Transitions at Both Poles: the Arctic & Madagascar” with Sappho Gilbert

Week 8 | April 3

“Lithium Ion Battery Manufacturing” with Adhitya Raghavan, HBS

“Deliberative Climate Politics – Comparing the Irish Citizens’ Assembly and the French Citizen Convention for Climate” with
Postdoctoral research fellow, Ash Center, HKS

Week 9 | April 11

“Can Doughnut Economics Guide Urban Development in Balance with People and Planet?” with Emil Bender Lassen in Public Policy student at HKS

“Regenerative Agrivoltaics as a path to net zero- the case for widespread implementation” with Anastassia Nefedova, Graduate Student (ALM) in Sustainability at the Harvard Extension School

Week 10 | April 17

“Private Wind Rights and Their Public Consequences” with Dolly Bai, 3L J.D. candidate at HLS

“Environmental History of Brazilian Hydropower: Reflecting on Past Experiences with Low-Carbon Energy” with Matthew P. Johnson, an environmental historian and 2022-2024 postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment