On September 1, 2022, the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability formally launched as Stanford University's first new school in 75 years. It was built on five years of dedicated work across the whole campus, hearkening back to the university's founding in 1885 as an institution dedicated to improving lives and working on behalf of "humanity and civilization."
One year after launch, we have the opportunity to reflect and celebrate our many milestones and accomplishments. The enormous scale, complexity, and urgency regarding the sustainability challenges demands us to be ambitious and prioritize key actions.
From new educational opportunities in sustainability to transformative advances in knowledge to our first official graduating class, our inaugural year affirmed our foundational vision to create a future where humans and nature thrive in concert and in perpetuity through excellence in research, education, innovations, and service.
To help commemorate our anniversary, we've collected stories of impact and achievement from across the school for a Year in Review. We are pleased to share these accomplishments not only to document our progress but also to reaffirm our commitment to reimagining the capacity of higher education to deal with the immense challenges of climate and sustainability. All told, the institutional accomplishments and research advancements presented here illustrate our history and preview why we are optimistic about the future as we look to build on the efforts of our faculty, staff, students, friends, and supporters.
Sustainability is the defining challenge of our time. Indeed, climate change is truly an existential threat to us all. It will affect every economy around the world and every human being on Earth. What we do today will have consequences for generations to come in the future. Communities across the globe today and generations to come are counting on us.
Painted on my office wall is the Indigenous saying, "We do not inherit this Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children." I hope that the committed work of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability inspires all to be part of this effort to create the solutions for a livable and sustainable planet now and for the future.
Best,
Arun
Arun Majumdar
Dean, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
Jay Precourt Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Energy Science and Engineering
Senior Fellow, Precourt Institute for Energy, Hoover Institution
In the year since our formal launch September 1, 2022, the school has been guided by four strategic priorities that encapsulate our most urgent efforts and define our strategic direction. These include supercharging research, fostering & recruiting talent, excellence in education, and our values. Read more about progress across these four areas:
Supercharging research
Excellence in education
Fostering & recruiting talent
Values
Workshop series bridging sustainability and business kicks off
Respectful workplace training launched for faculty and staff
Sustainable Societies Institute names leaders to create a vision for the institute
Faculty searches launched focusing on environmental justice, China and climate, environmental behavioral sciences, and more
Discovery grant program launched to foster knowledge-driven fundamental research across disciplines
Graduate certificate program announced as a way to engage graduate students in sustainability topics outside their degree programs
In the past year our faculty delved into issues facing our electrical grid as more renewables come online, risks of wildfires and other hazards, predictions about the effects of climate change, land use to protect nature, and other issues society is facing as we all work to respond to a warming world.
Shifting current EV charging from home to work and night to day could cut costs and help the grid.
A new research partnership will combine Indigenous and scientific knowledge to monitor marine life in a sacred tribal region that may be a bellwether of how native species will fare in the face of climate change.
Whales are ingesting tiny specks of plastic in far larger quantities than previously thought — and nearly all of it comes from the animals they eat, not the water they gulp.
Stanford researchers have developed an AI model for predicting dangerous particle pollution to help track the American West's rapidly worsening wildfire smoke. The detailed results show millions of Americans are routinely exposed to pollution at levels rarely seen just a decade ago.
Artificial intelligence provides new evidence our planet will cross the global warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius within 10 to 15 years. Even with low emissions, we could see 2° C of warming. But a future with less warming remains within reach
The researchers created maps showing where warmer weather has left trees in conditions that don't suit them, making them more prone to being replaced by other species. The findings could help inform long-term wildfire and ecosystem management in these "zombie forests."
New research reveals wastewater injected underground by fossil fuel operators caused a magnitude 5.6 earthquake in November 2022 in the Peace River area of Alberta's oil sands region. This is the first study to link seismicity in the area to human activity.
A new approach quantifies the value of mangrove forests in Belize for carbon sequestration, tourism, fisheries, and coastal protection, then uses the values to target conservation and restoration.
About 47 million homes use natural gas or propane-burning cooktops and ovens. Stanford researchers found that cooking with gas stoves can raise indoor levels of the carcinogen benzene above those found in secondhand smoke.
