Experts in Subject: Environment

Stephen Adolph, PhD, Stuart Mudd Professor of Biology and department chair, specializes in the study of lizards, especially Sceloporus lizards (small insectivorous lizards common in southwestern North America). His research goals are to understand how the thermal environment influences the physiology and behavior of both individual lizards and lizard populations, and how animals respond to environmental change. His […]

Tanja Srebotnjak, PhD, is the inaugural director of the Hixon Center for Sustainable Environmental Design. Her research interests focus on the development and application of statistical methods for describing and analyzing a range of environmental issues, including the environmental and health risks associated with hydraulic fracturing in California, the spatial analysis of ecosystem service hotspots, […]

Paul Steinberg, PhD, Malcolm Lewis Professor of Sustainability and Society, focuses his research and teaching on global environmental politics, with a special interest in biodiversity conservation and environmental policy in developing countries. At the broadest level, he is interested in how different societies around the world respond to environmental problems. Steinberg’s latest book is Who Rules […]

Have you ever read the label on a bottle of vitamins and wondered why people need cobalt, zinc, iron and manganese? In nature these metals perform a remarkable array of chemical transformations that include water oxidation in photosynthesis, oxygen transportation by iron in red blood cells, and nitrogen fixation by bacterial nitrogenase enzymes. These reactions […]