Introducing the 2023 Environmental Fellows

The Harvard University Center for the Environment announces the 2023 cohort of Environmental Fellows: Anna Lea Albright, Conleigh Byers, Abby Ostriker, Roxana Shafiee, and Megan Wilcots. 

The Harvard University Center for the Environment is thrilled to announce the 2023 cohort of Environmental Fellows: Anna Lea Albright, Conleigh Byers, Abby Ostriker, Roxana Shafiee, and Megan Wilcots. These fellows will join a group of scholars who will be beginning the second year of their fellowships. Together, the Environmental Fellows at Harvard will form a community of researchers with diverse backgrounds united by exceptional scholarship, intellectual curiosity, and a drive to understand some of our most imperative environmental challenges.

ANNA LEA ALBRIGHT 

School: Faculty of Arts & Sciences
Faculty Hosts: Michael Brenner and Peter Huybers
PhD: Climate Physics, Sorbonne University

Anna Lea Albright uses models, theory, and observations to improve understanding of how clouds and rainfall change as a result of a warming planet.

Anna Lea received her AB/AM from Harvard College in 2017 in Evolutionary Biology and Earth and Planetary Sciences. Following a year of research in Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, she moved to Paris to pursue her PhD with Professor Sandrine Bony (Laboratory of Dynamic Meteorology, Paris) and Professor Bjorn Stevens (Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg). Her PhD research focused on better understanding the response of trade cumulus clouds to warming. She used models of varying complexity and observations, some of which she collected herself during the EUREC4A field campaign. Anna Lea also combined her interests in art and atmospheric science to investigate the role of industrialization and air pollution in the works of J.M.W. Turner and Claude Monet.

As an Environmental Fellow, Anna Lea will work with Professor Michael Brenner in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Professor Peter Huybers in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Through these collaborations, she will create an observational benchmark data set for rainfall and explore constraints on predicted rainfall changes in climate models.

CONLEIGH BYERS

School: Harvard Kennedy School
Faculty Host: Henry Lee
PhD: Electrical Engineering, ETH Zurich

Conleigh Byers uses tools from operations research, electrical engineering, and economics to design decarbonized energy systems, with a focus on power systems operations and planning.

Conleigh received the ScD in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich. Her dissertation, Price Formation in Electricity Market Design, examines how we can derive good economic signals from the non-convex mixed integer programs used to dispatch generators in the power grid. She holds a dual masters from MIT in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and Technology & Policy and a BSE in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Princeton University.

As an Environmental Fellow, Conleigh will work on the growing challenge of achieving resource adequacy under deep decarbonization, i.e., how we ensure that there is enough of the right kinds of resources available on the system to meet load reliably. Achieving net zero carbon emissions while expanding electrification will require a massive investment in new energy infrastructure, and Conleigh's research focuses on system design choices that determine the pace and pathway of decarbonization.

ABBY OSTRIKER

School: Harvard Kennedy School
Faculty Host: Robert Stavins
PhD: Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Abigail (Abby) Ostriker is an economist studying how individuals, firms, and governments both influence and are affected by environmental risk.

Abby earned her BS in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with minors in Economics and Energy Studies. After two years working as a research assistant at MIT, she enrolled in MIT's Economics PhD program. In her doctoral dissertation, she explored the trade-off between regulatory benefits and costs in the context of residential flood risk. Her research aims to use the tools of public finance to study the economics of environmental risk, with a particular focus on adaptation to climate change. As an Environmental Fellow, Abby will work with Joseph Aldy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

ROXANA SHAFIEE

School: Faculty of Arts & Sciences
Faculty Host: Dan Schrag and Missy Holbrook
PhD: Environmental Research: Marine Biogeochemistry, University of Oxford

Roxana Shafiee is biogeochemist interested in the global cycling of major and minor elements, and their implications for the climate and biosphere.

Roxana completed her PhD training with Professor Rosalind Rickaby at the University of Oxford, examining how marine microorganisms mediate the global cycling of nitrogen, a key building block of life on Earth. In her PhD thesis, Roxana developed our understanding of how the essential need for scarce trace metal nutrients–such as iron and copper–dictate the distribution and growth of nitrogen-cycling microorganisms in the oceans. Following her PhD, Roxana was an Environment, Climate Change and Energy Researcher at the Scottish Parliament, and held the position of Stanback Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Environmental Science at the California Institute of Technology between 2022–2023.

As an Environmental Fellow, Roxana will be integrating her interests in environmental research from scientific and policy perspectives to examine the validity of the voluntary carbon offset market. Roxana will be undertaking this research with the support of Professors Dan Schrag and Missy Holbrook.

MEGAN WILCOTS

School: Faculty of Arts & Sciences and Arnold Arboretum
Faculty Host: Ben Taylor
PhD: Ecology from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities

Megan Wilcots researches how the timing and intensity of warming events in the Arctic affects nitrogen fixation and carbon uptake in tundra plant communities.

Megan received her PhD in Ecology from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities and her BA in Environmental Biology with a focus on Ecology and Evolution from Columbia University. Her research experience has spanned from the tropics to the poles, with a focus on how global change affects carbon uptake of ecosystems. Her dissertation research focused on how nitrogen deposition affects plant community composition and ecosystem carbon storage in Minnesota grasslands. She also works in the Arctic, understanding how nutrient release from permafrost thaw may restructure Arctic ecosystems.

Megan is the first Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow from the Arnold Arboretum, a position she holds jointly with her HUCE fellowship. As a Fellow, Megan works with Professor Ben Taylor to study how Arctic heatwaves alter nitrogen fixation and carbon uptake.