Faculty & Staff

Lead Faculty

Karen C. Seto

Yale School of the Environment 
Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science; Faculty Director of the Hixon Center for Urban Sustainability 

Karen Seto is one of the world’s leading experts on how urbanization will affect the planet. A geographer and urbanization scientist, she developed the first global forecast of urban land expansion and has pioneered methods to reconstruct historical urban land-use with satellite imagery. She has more than twenty-five years of research experience in Asia where she has conducted fieldwork in over thirty urban areas. Her research has made discoveries on how urbanization will affect climate change, food systems, and biodiversity. Professor Seto serves on many national and international scientific bodies. She was a Coordinating Lead Author for two UN Climate Change Reports, the IPCC 6th (2022) and 5th (2014) Assessment Reports. In both reports she co-led the chapter on how cities can mitigate climate change.

Mark S. Ashton

Yale School of the Environment 
Senior Associate Dean of The Forest School; Morris K. Jesup Professor of Silviculture and Forest Ecology; Director of Yale Forests

Mark Ashton has conducted over thirty-five years of research on the biological and physical processes governing the dynamics of natural forests and on the creation of their agroforestry analogs. His long-term research concentrates on tropical and temperate forests of the Asian and American realms. His field sites within these regions were selected specifically to allow comparison of growth, adaptation, and plasticity within and among close assemblages of species that have evolved within forest climates with differing degrees of seasonality. The results of his research have been applied to the development and testing of silvicultural techniques for restoration of degraded lands. He is the author of over 160 peer reviewed journal papers; an author of two field guides to tropical forest trees; an author of the primary silviculture textbook used throughout North America; and an editor or author to twelve other monographs and books concerning the management of forests for a variety of social values concerning agroforestry, watershed management and climate mitigation. Ashton has been recognized by fourteen university awards for his teaching and advising, the David M. Smith Award for Silvicultural Research by the Society of American Foresters, and the UNESCO Sultan Quaboos Award for tropical forest conservation.  

Featured Faculty

Angel Hsu  

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill  
Associate Professor of Public Policy and Environment, Ecology and Energy

Angel Hsu is the founder and director of the Data-Driven EnviroLab, an interdisciplinary research group that applies quantitative approaches to pressing environmental issues. She focuses on the convergence of urbanization and climate change, specifically delving into how cities play dual roles as contributors to and potential solutions to climate change. She was a contributing author to the IPCC 6th Assessment Report and lead author of the 2018 UNEP Emissions Gap Report chapter on non-state and subnational actors. She regularly advises governments, has chaired and contributed to the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Councils, and was a 2018 TED Age of Amazement and 2020 TED Climate Countdown invited speaker. She has a Ph.D. in Environmental Policy from Yale University and was formerly an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. 

Neha Sami 

Indian Institute for Human Settlements 
Associate Dean, School of Environment and Sustainability; Senior Faculty Lead, Academics & Research

Neha Sami has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from the University of Michigan, a Masters in Environmental Management from the Yale School of the Environment and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Mumbai. Her research focuses on the governance of infrastructure, especially mega-infrastructure in the context of post-liberalization urban India. She also works on questions of environmental governance focusing on institutional analysis and state capacity as well as on questions of urban pedagogy.  

Arianna Salazar-Miranda

Yale School of the Environment  
Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Data Science  

Arianna Salazar-Miranda’s research examines the relationship between urban planning, the built environment, human behavior, and sustainability using computational methods and new sources of data. Other research interests include developing digital tools in collaboration with cities and communities to support their sustainability efforts. 

William Solecki

Hunter College, City University of New York 
Professor in the Department of Geography

William Solecki’s research focuses on urban environmental change, resilience, and environmental transitions generally, and urban climate vulnerability and adaptation specifically. He has served as leader or co-leader of numerous climate international, national, and local climate impacts studies and assessments including on several local, national, and international science committees and panels and co-Chair of the New York City on Panel on Climate Change (NPCC). He has most recently served as a lead author on the IPCC, AR6, WG2, Chapter 17 on “Decision-making options for managing risk.” He is a co-founder of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN) that now includes approximately 1,500 members and co-editor of the recent Climate Change and Cities Assessment (ARC3) Report published by Cambridge University Press. He also serves as the co-editor of the journals Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability and Journal of Extreme Events. His Ph.D. is in Geography (1990) from Rutgers University.