Message from Chancellor Fox: One of UCSD’s greatest institutional strengths is the breadth and depth of faculty research on a range of important topics. Each month, Chancellor’s Corner will showcase cross-disciplinary faculty expertise in a specific area. I invite you to learn more about the work of these scholars, and I hope you share my pride in their achievements and their contributions to society.

ENVIRONMENT & SUSTAINABILITY

Clark C. Gibson, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Clark Gibson researches developmental politics, foreign aid, democracy, and the environment in the context of the U.S and also of African and Central and South American countries. He is currently researching and writing on the politics of foreign aid. More…

Charles Kennel, Environment and Sustainability Initiative
Charles Kennel is leading  UCSD’s Environment and Sustainability Initiative. Charles F. Kennel was the ninth director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. More…

John Orcutt, Associate Vice Chancellor,
Government Research Relations; Director, Research Innovation Initiatives
John Orcutt has been appointed as Associate Vice Chancellor for Government Research Relations and director of Research Innovation Initiatives. The appointment is a new position within the office of the Vice Chancellor for Research designed to strengthen UCSD’s efforts to secure funding for the university’s research priorities. More….

Naomi Oreskes, Associate Professor,
Department of History; Director, Science Studies Program
Naomi Oreskes specializes in the history of research methods and practice in earth and environmental sciences. Currently, she is interested in issues related to the gathering of consensus in the scientific community on debated subjects in science. She is also researching on the factor of political forces in setting and moving scientific research agenda, especially that of oceanography, geophysics, and global climate and environmental change. More…

David Naguib Pellow, Associate Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies;
Director, California Cultures in Comparative Perspective
David Pellow joined the UCSD faculty in the fall of 2002. An Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies, Pellow is also the Director of the California Cultures in Comparative Perspective, a research initiative that supports creative interdisciplinary research, teaching and collaborations among faculty, students, and the public. His primary disciplines are sociology and ethnic studies, and his areas of research focus on environmental conflict in ethnic communities in the U.S., Africa, and Asia. Pellow can speak to issues concerning race/ethnicity, the environment, labor, social protest, immigration, free trade agreements, and globalization, as well as the global impacts of the high tech industry in Asia, Latin America and other regions of the world. More…

Keith Pezzoli, Lecturer in Urban Studies and Planning;
Supervisor of Field Research
Keith Pezzoli researches and writes on environmental management, sustainability science and regional information systems. His specific areas of interest are environmental management systems, ISO 14001 environmental management systems, industrial ecology; City-regions, regional planning and globalization; as well as livable cities, human settlements and urban land use in developing countries; sustainability science, environmental health sciences, watershed management; planning pedagogy, research methods, and university-community collaboration; and information and communications technology, such as 3D visualization and GIS. More…

Frieder Seible, Dean, UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering, Reissner Professor of Structural Engineering University of California - San Diego
Frieder Seible's achievements include the development of large-scale structural testing techniques, seismic assessment and retrofit of bridges, and the application of Polymer Matrix Composites (PMC) in civil engineering structures. He developed and directs the Charles Lee Powell Structural Research Laboratories, which serve as a worldwide resource for full-scale testing and analysis of structures. Among his many recent research projects, Professor Frieder Seible is applying earthquake retrofit technologies to protect high-risk buildings from terrorist bomb blasts. Working with a number of collaborators, Seible is also investigating the use wireless sensors to monitor bridge safety. Seible has recently designed a new construction system comprised of hollow composite tubes filled with more traditional materials such as concrete. The system was used when California built the world's first composite bridge for heavy traffic. More…

Richard C.J. Somerville, Professor of Meteorology,
Scripps Institution of Oceanography University of California - San Diego
Richard Somerville is a professor of meteorology in the Climate Research Division and the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. His research interests include theoretical dynamical meteorology, particularly climate modeling, numerical weather prediction, and computational geophysical fluid dynamics. He is a general expert on global climate change and is a specialist in computer modeling of the climate system. His research includes the development of mathematical models of large-scale atmospheric circulation and air-sea interactions, along with theoretical studies of the predictability of climate. More…

Mark H. Thiemens, Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry;
Dean, Division of Physical Sciences University of California - San Diego
Thiemens, an expert in atmospheric chemistry and cosmochemistry, can discuss solar system evolution, the evolution and origin of the atmosphere and life on Earth, the chemistry of Martian meteorites, climate policy and global warming. More…

Jeffrey Vincent, Natural Resource & Environmental Policy Issues
Vincent is an authority on natural resource and environmental policy issues in developing countries, especially those in the Asia-Pacific region. He has particular expertise on issues related to tropical forests, air and water pollution, and green accounting (the incorporation of environmental quality into GNP and other measures of macroeconomic performance). He has some expertise on the economic impacts of AIDS and other infectious diseases in developing countries. Vincent is currently the lead economist on a multidisciplinary study aimed at developing better procedures for assessing and valuing biological diversity in tropical rainforests. He is completing a research project that evaluates green accounting measures developed by the World Bank. He is working with colleagues on several UC campuses to launch a research program on illegal harvest and trade of tropical timber. He directs the IR/PS new career concentration in International Environmental Policy. More…

Christopher Wills, Professor of Ecology, Behavior, and Evolutionary Biology University of California - San Diego
Wills, an evolutionary biologist, is an expert on human and primate diversity, population biology, ecological diversity, and the evolution of diseases.

He has searched for the identity of "mitochondrial Eve" and the origins of human diversity and studied the evolution of the human brain and the impact on species of pests and plagues. More…

** To learn more about other campus faculty scholars and areas of expertise, please visit the searchable UCSD Faculty Experts Database at: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/facultyExperts/