People
Staff
Dr. Timon McPhearson is the founding director of the Urban Systems Lab, professor at NYU Environmental Studies, and author of Nature-based Solutions for Cities. His work takes an interdisciplinary systems approach to advancing urban resilience, equity, and sustainability earning the Ecological Society of America’s Sustainability Science Award twice as well as the Innovation in Sustainability Science Award. Dr. McPhearson was named an NYC Climate Hero and was awarded the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Stockholm Resilience Centre, and the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. He currently serves as co-chair of the NYC Panel on Climate Change. His books also including Urban Planet (2018) and Resilient Urban Futures (2021) are widely read. He advises NGOs, corporations, and policymakers on urban climate risk and resilience, has spoken to audiences at Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Cornell among other universities, and his research is extensively covered including in The New York Times, The Guardian, Science Friday, NBC, PBS Newshour, Voice of America, and more.
Follow him on ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and LinkedIn. Download his CV here.
Christopher Kennedy is Associate Director at the Urban Systems Lab at New York University and lecturer in the Parsons School of Design. As a senior research scientist, Kennedy’s work focuses on advancing climate resilience and adaptation in urban areas, and the effective implementation of nature-based solutions and community-based planning. Kennedy holds a BS in Environmental Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an MA in Environmental Conservation Education from NYU, and a PhD in Educational Leadership and Management from the University of North Carolina. LinkedIn
Ahmed Mustafa is the Senior Research Scientist at the Urban Systems Lab. His work focuses on scenario modeling for several National Science Foundation funded projects. He develops and implements computational models to simulate possible spatial patterns of future cities.
Ahmed received his Ph.D. in Engineering and Technology in 2018 from the University of Liège in Belgium. His research, teaching, and community engagement center on the development and application of modeling and simulation tools for exploring urban systems, land use change, and transport. In addition, Ahmed has acquired experience in the industry, which he gained from working as a GIS expert for multinational companies.
Loan Diep is the Assistant Director of Urban Biodiversity and Nature-based Solutions Research. She bridges the worlds of academic research, policy development, and urban practice to promote the systemic integration of nature in city planning. Drawing on her experience with global networks, she facilitates knowledge exchange and supports the co-creation and scaling of evidence-based strategies. Loan's personal research explores the intersection of urban nature, environmental justice, and water services in informal settlements. Loan holds a PhD in Urban Studies, an MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development, and a BSc in Environmental Geography from University College London (UCL). LinkedIn.
Madhavi Jain is a Research Scientist in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University, where her work centers on climate modeling, with a particular focus on urban heat exposure and the use of high-resolution, physics-based atmospheric models. At the Urban Systems Lab, Madhavi leads modeling efforts for ClimateIQ, applying the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to simulate urban heat dynamics in cities around the world. Her research integrates climate modeling with advanced data analytics and the development of large-scale datasets to support extreme heat hazard assessment and urban decision-making. She brings expertise in high-performance computing and the Google Cloud Platform, enabling efficient handling of computationally intensive climate simulations. Madhavi holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi, India, where her dissertation explored the impacts of urbanization on localized weather patterns. She also earned an M.Sc. in Environmental Studies and a B.Sc. in Physics (Honors) from Delhi University. LinkedIn, Google Scholar.
Sally El Hajjar was born in Lebanon the mid-nineties. She received the diploma of Electromechanical Engineer form the Saint-Joseph University in 2018, and the M.S. of Renewable Energy degree in 2019 from the Saint-Joseph University and the Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon, and her Ph.D. degree in 2022 from University of the Basque country, Spain, in computer science. She also worked as a research associate at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER). Her current research interests include pattern recognition, contribution to Multiview clustering, machine learning, deep learning, cellular automata, and various computer science applications.
Ashish is a Water and Environmental Engineer with a Ph.D. in Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable Engineering from Arizona State University. Prior to joining USL, he completed his postdoctoral research in the Department of Systems Engineering and Management at the Air Force Institute of Technology in Ohio. His research focuses on water and environmental systems, including urban and natural watershed hydrology, water systems modeling, hydrodynamics, hydroinformatics, sustainability and resilience, systems science, geographic information systems, computational methods, numerical modeling, infrastructure adaptation, and environmental engineering. His work centers on advancing modeling techniques, tools, and decision-support frameworks to address the complex challenges of planning, managing, and adapting water infrastructure in a changing world. He is dedicated to bridging the gap between science, policy, and practice. LinkedIn, Github.
Rajan Jain is a Senior Laboratory Associate in Software Engineering, holding a Master’s degree in Information Technology from Arizona State University and a Bachelor’s degree from Gujarat Technological University in India. He has experience in software development, frontend engineering, and data pipeline design. His work focuses on building web-based tools that integrate AI models and spatial data for climate risk analysis. Rajan leads the development of ClimateIQ’s frontend architecture, designs cloud-based data pipelines, and implements scalable systems for environmental data visualization and processing. As a former Research Assistant, he contributed to projects involving AQI and weather datasets, with an emphasis on climate data analysis and interactive visualization. LinkedIn
Joe is a software technician at the Urban Systems Lab. He has several years of industry and research experience as a full stack software engineer, specializing in data visualization, particularly within geospatial analysis. He has contributed to the Ocellus family of applications and platforms at the lab, and is interested in how software systems embed within and feed back into social/ecological contexts and the built environment. He has a Bachelors in Computer Science/Philosophy from McGill University and an MS in Data Visualization from Parsons.
Veronica Olivotto is an associate research scientist at the Urban Systems Lab, leading program evaluation efforts for the NATURA project. She is also a planned relocation expert at the Zolberg Institute of Migration and Mobility at the New School. Her research interests concern how to plan for climate adaptation, especially managed retreat, while accounting for how this policy intersects with dimensions justices in coastal environments. In the past Veronica worked on climate adaptation decision making at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). Veronica holds a Ph.D. in public and urban policy from The New School and a master's in urban development from Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands). She co-runs Moffat St Community Garden in Bushwick, Brooklyn. LinkedIn.
Natalie Pierson is a Research Coordinator at the Urban Systems Lab, where she has worked since 2022. She works primarily on the NSF-funded NATURA Global Roadmap project, focusing on literature review methodology, analysis, and team coordination to advance understanding of urban Nature-based Solutions (NbS) knowledge, gaps, and opportunities globally. Natalie also contributes to the GoGreenNext project, helping transform the board game Ekos into a digital game that highlights the role of NbS in urban health. In addition, she supports the United By Nature initiative through literature review methodology on “Bright Spots in Nature,” a project that highlights the successes of nature conservation and restoration across the United States. Natalie is passionate about urban environmental health and how the effects of climate change impact the well-being of city residents, particularly how protecting and restoring nature can help mitigate those health risks. She holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Science and Environmental Studies from The New School and will begin her MS in Environmental Health Sciences with a concentration in Environmental Toxicology at NYU in Fall 2025. LinkedIn.
Eric Bonner is a research associate concentrating on user experience research for ClimateIQ. He holds a bachelor’s of arts degree in Urban Studies from The New School University with a minor in environmental studies. His degree focused on climate resilience in cities and suburbs. Eric’s research explores urban typology frameworks and the impact of place attachment/identity on community perceptions of risk and hazard adaptation and mitigation efforts. LinkedIn.
Phuong Anh (Anna) Bui, a rising senior at Parsons School of Design, is pursuing a major in Communication Design and a minor in Interdisciplinary Science at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts. Her design practice is driven by a deep commitment to making data and information accessible to all, with the goal of informing, persuading, and inspiring action. Anna has extensive experience crafting brand identities and web-based experiences for climate-focused non-profit organizations, including the Vietnamese Youth Cooperation Organization, Youth4Climate Vietnam, Climate Change Learning Hub, and GIN Habitat for Humanity.
Arshya is a senior in the Design and Technology program at Parsons School of Design and minoring in Data Visualisation. She spends all her time making, planning and thinking about video games. Her main focus through her work is about playful interactivity, and her life motto is “A storyteller by heart and a coder by craft”. Oh, she also reads a ton of books!
Carole is a research assistant at the Urban Systems Lab, contributing to the NATURA global roadmap project. Her research interests are at the intersection of solidarity economics—emphasizing community stewardship and the decommodification of land and property—and climate justice in a post-capitalist world. Her graduate thesis explored community-led adaptive reuse as a form of vernacular resilience in New York City. Outside of academia, Carole has eight years of experience in the data and technology sector as a technical product manager and data governance specialist. She has collaborated with government organizations like Ontario Power Generation and non-profits such as the Alliance for Innovative Regulation and the Inter-American Development Bank. Notably, she led the design of a techsprint aimed at enhancing government transparency and combating corruption in public spending across Latin America and the Caribbean. She holds a Master of Management Analytics from Queen’s University, an MSc in Ecological Economics from the University of Edinburgh, and is currently a PhD student in the Urban and Public Policy program at The New School.
Visiting Scholars
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Jie Cao is a postdoctoral researcher at the State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. Cao’s research focuses on the ecological effects of urbanization, particularly the synergistic impacts of climate change and urbanization on urban heat environments. She adopts a socio-ecological systems perspective, exploring population and spatial disparities in environmental exposure, and seeks to investigate the potential of nature-based solutions in improving both the environment and environmental equity. Her current work examines the spatial-temporal heterogeneity of temperature and its effects on human health, as well as the cooling effects and health benefits of urban trees at the intra-urban scale. She holds a BE in Environmental Engineering from Shandong University, and a PhD in Urban Ecology from the University of Science and Technology of China.
Anna Kramer is visiting scholar at the Urban Systems Lab and advises on the ClimateIQ initiative. Anna has several years of experience in engineering consulting, where she utilized data to inform the development of ecological and resilient infrastructure. She continues to work directly with clients to solve climate-related issues and attract funding for resilience measures. Anna has extensive experience working with open-source spatial data and recently developed a coastal flooding risk index for communities in New York City. She holds a bachelors degree from Cooper Union and a masters degree from NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
PhD Students
Pablo Herreros studied environmental engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain, where he specialized in environmental impact assessment. Interested in using his knowledge of Geographic Information Systems and ecology for the benefit of society, he moved to Wageningen University in the Netherlands to complete an MSc in urban environmental management. He is now applying socio-ecological analysis to urban ecosystem services and environmental risks, with special focus on their spatial attributes and their links to social justice. He aims to provide policymakers with evidence-based information for spatial planning and design.
Julie Syversen is a Ph.D. Candidate in Public and Urban Policy at The New School. Her research focuses on integrating urban resilience and climate justice into disaster recovery processes under the supervision of Professor Timon McPhearson. Julie holds a Master's Degree in Disaster Resilience and Sustainable Development from the University of Newcastle (Australia) and a Bachelor's Degree in Societal Safety and Environment from the Arctic University of Norway, UiT. Currently, she is a Research Assistant at the Tishman Environment and Design Center. Prior to her Ph.D., Julie worked as a societal safety and sustainability consultant at Norconsult. In this role, she collaborated with local, regional, and national government agencies in Norway to develop and implement policies and plans for DRR and CCA. Julie has also contributed her expertise to various UN agencies, including UNDRR, UNESCAP, and UN Women.
Jen Ventrella is a PhD student in the Public and Urban Policy program at the New School. She holds a dual Master's degree in mechanical engineering and applied anthropology from Oregon State University, where she studied sensor-based monitoring and evaluation of clean energy technologies for international development programs. She is interested in studying the politics of climate change adaptation and the effects of climate-induced migration on economies and livelihoods
Mallory Rutigliano is a sustainability expert based in New York. Mallory works on climate resiliency for the NYC Mayor's Office of Management and Budget, contributing to the city's Climate Budgeting initiative. Mallory is also the vice chair for the New York chapter of the Sierra Club, and chairs committees on environmental education and the Hudson River estuary, among other positions. Mallory previously conducted sustainable finance research at BloombergNEF on topics such as global policy, fossil fuel divestment, and green bonds. Mallory also has a background in behavioral health research focused on addressing health disparities, alongside the environmental and biological sciences with an emphasis on policy. Mallory earned her MPA in Environmental Science and Policy from Columbia University and her BA in Biology and Psychology from Dartmouth College. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Public and Urban Policy program at The New School, focusing on food systems.
Bart Orr is a PhD student in Public and Urban Policy at the New School. He is interested in the relationship between climate change adaptation and resilience policies and socioeconomic inequality. He is also a member of the Global Urban Futures project at the New School.
Ishita is a research assistant at the Urban Systems Lab in National Science Foundation’s Catalyzing Human-centered Solutions through Research and Innovation in Science, the Environment and Society (CRISES) program, dealing with Climate Hazard and Risks. She is currently a PhD student at the Public and Urban Policy program at The New School and her research interest lies in coastal city resilience for people and types of infrastructure, and exploring governance for climate finance for developing countries. She has an MS in Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management from The New School along with a minor in Civic Service Design from Parsons School of Design and a BArch in Architecture from BRAC University in Bangladesh. She is an architect and has consulted for Habitat for Humanity International in New York, and consulted in project proposal development for UN HABITAT Global Solutions Division, UNDP Bangladesh and Governor Island Trust as part of C3: Climate Center Consortium in The New School team. Ishita served as Country Coordinator Bangladesh for Possible (former 10:10 Climate Action) and took part in developing climate change awareness campaign projects. She also takes an interest in entrepreneurship and has been a mentor at the US Venture Sustainability Accelerator in 2023 and the editor of an entrepreneurial book called The Ideal Quitter - Lessons Worth Half a Million USD One of her notable published works is a chapter titled Linkage between Traditional Architectural Elements in South Asia Representing Regionalism and Achieving Salutogenesis Ishita likes learning languages, traveling and exploring everything in art and culture.
Sofya is an urban researcher and designer focusing on the nexus between social, environmental, and historical connections in post-industrial spaces. Currently, she is a Ph.D. Student at The New School with a major in Public and Urban Policy and a minor in Design and Urban Justice affiliated with Parsons School of Design. Sofya’s research aims at creating a space-making program for post-industrial waterscapes, with a particular goal of achieving water resilience, blue-green infrastructure implementation, and preserving cultural heritage. She worked as a landscape architect and researcher in Israel, creating sustainable solutions to areas with a high risk of flooding. She started her academic career with research on ex-Soviet single-industry towns’ environmental and cultural challenges, published several articles, and participated in international conferences in Australia, the UK, the USA, and Canada. As an urban designer, Sofya became a winner of international competitions in environmental and architectural design. Within the Urban Systems Labs team, she is involved in developing the Coastal Flood Vulnerability Index for New York City.
Faculty Fellows
Bhawani Venkataraman is Associate Professor of Chemistry at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School. Her research is in the field of chemical education and science communication. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed chemical education research journals. Her book Paradox of Water, explores the intersection of the scientific, social, and policy implications around access to safe drinking water.
Rocío Carrero is an environmental scientist with expertise in climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, scenarios and spatial modeling. Since 2016, she has concentrated her efforts in developing and testing experimental models to assess how urban communities build resilience. Dr. Carrero has worked with the EU ECHO, The World Bank, the Red Cross and the IADB, as well as governments and NGOs in over a dozen countries. She holds a PhD in Geosciences from the University Pablo de Olavide of Seville, Spain. Prior to joining the The New School, she was a postdoc at the University College London (UCL) leading urban resilience projects with Dr. Michele Acuto at the City Leadership Lab. She is part of UREx's scenario modeling task force.
Elizabeth Cook is a Research Fellow at the Urban Systems Lab and Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Science at Barnard College. She is an urban ecosystem ecologist and her research focuses on future urban sustainability and human-environment feedbacks in urban and nearby native ecosystems. She conducts research on sustainability and resilience planning through participatory scenario development with local stakeholders and assessing how urban governance and knowledge networks influence planning in Latin American and US cities. She was previously a Chilean National Commission on Science and Technology (CONICYT) post-doctoral fellow at the Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia and earned her PhD at Arizona State University.
Zbigniew “Z” Grabowski is a faculty fellow at the Urban Systems Lab at the New School and a Research Fellow at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. His work focuses on the intersection of socio-technical systems evolution and biocultural conservation. He has research interests in green infrastructure, river restoration, dam removal, experiential environmental learning, and governance. He has worked at the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community, where he led the design and installation of a demonstration garden in the BRE Architecture Innovation Park, and has been a member of international research networks including the UK-NERC funded Valuing Nature Network and Blue Green Cities - Clean Water For All. His work has been published in scientific journals (the Journal of Infrastructure Systems, River Research and Applications, Science of the Total Environment, Water Alternatives, Land Use Policy, and Environmental Science and Policy), and been featured in the popular press (PhysOrg and the Financial Times). He is also a Breakthrough Generation Fellow at the Breakthrough Institute and Adjunct Faculty in Geography at Portland State University. Learn more about his work at ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and LinkedIn.
Luis Ortiz is Faculty Fellow at the Urban Systems Lab at The New School. A mechanical engineer by training, he is interested in the intersection of built environments, humans, and the atmosphere. In particular, he is interested in how climate change impacts energy use and health, as well as how cities may mitigate and adapt to these impacts. His recent work as a member of the UREx SRN project involved projecting vulnerability to weather extremes across a range of stakeholder-driven land use and climate scenarios.
Before joining the Urban Systems Lab, Luis earned his PhD at The City College of New York, where he worked on high-resolution extreme heat projections for New York City as well as impacts of climate change on the city’s summer electric demand for air conditioning. His work on heat wave projections will be featured in the upcoming Third New York City Panel on Climate Change report, scheduled for release in early 2019. To find out more about his work, see ResearchGate and Google Scholar.
Erik Andersson is a Research Fellow at the Urban Systems Lab, although more frequently encountered in his capacity as an associate professor with Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University. Dr Andersson is interested in how ecological conditions and processes together with governance and human perceptions and values shape multifunctionality and how we understand and appreciate nature. He is also interested in systems thinking and theory and the development of the broad sustainability-resilience discourse. Dr Andersson has published widely in scientific journals (e.g. Nature, Nature Sustainability, Ecological Applications, BioScience, COSUST), in books (e.g. The Science and Practice of Landscape Stewardship, Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Areas) and popular press (e.g. The Nature of Cities). Among other things Dr Anderson leads the European project ENABLE (2017-2020) and has served as expert on a number of panels, reports and inquiries, primarily for green infrastructure or ecosystem service related projects and processes. Andersson is frequently and more or less formally involved in a continuous dialogue and knowledge co-creation with authorities and actors at levels from local to international. He is also an extraordinary associate professor with North-West University in South Africa.
Past Members
DIRECTORS
Daniel Sauter
Valerie Lechene
Staff & Research Fellows
Jill Corson Lake
Pauline Munga
Claudia Tomateo
FACULTY FELLOWS
Chris Woebken
Debra Anderson McGrory
Karim Ahmed
Aaron Hill
Andrea Marpillero-Colomina
Tommy CheMou Yang
Anna Fisyak
Postdoctoral Fellows
Khila Dahal
Peleg Kremer
Richard Karty
Sanpisa Sritrairat
Yaella Depietri
Peter Sigrist
Bianca Lopez
Yeowon Kim
Luis Ortiz
Research Assistants & ASSOCIATES
Jaskirat Randhawa
Jason Mandel
Chrissy Remein
Ruchika Lodha
Qi Yang
Sarah Kontos
Saloni Shah
Yahnze Wu
Peilu Fan
Wes Thomason
Emily Bowe
John Outwater
Jeremy Odell
Frankie Ackerman
Chella Strong
Jiray Avedisian
Xinyue Elena Peng
Nam Pham
Emma Holtzman
Solene Shandrow
STUDENT ASSISTANTS
Ryann Abunuwara
Emma Jane Geisler
Max Scott
Maria Llona Garcia
Chandler Louden
PhD Students
Filipa Grilo
Toni Castro-Cosío
Zoé Hamstead
Hildegaard Link
Jing Wang
Neele Larondelle
Katharina Hölscher
Mayumi Hirye
Avigail Vantu
Katinka Wijsman
Belen Fodde
Rory Curtin
Audrey Jenkins
Masters Students
Elsa Velasco Valdés
Aucher Serr
Christina Puzzolo
Cheryl Bennett
Allison Molinaro
Nour Zein
Juno Garrah
Visiting Scholars & Fellows
Eliška Lorencová
Clair Cooper
Nuala Flood (Fulbright Scholar)
Alex Putzer
Melissa Ingaruca Moreno
María Ruiz de Gopegui Aramburu (Fulbright Scholar)
Alannah Hofemeier
Livia Shamir
Yves Räth
Charlotte Stijnen
Alex Springer
Shahryar Sarabi
UNDERGRAD STUDENTS
Madeline Balitona
Isabella Marinho
Kate Bilezekian
Julia St. Clair
Madeline Balintona
Ana Correa do lago