Affiliates

Simon Richter

Simon Richter is the Class of 1965 Endowed Term Professor of German and Dutch literature and culture.  His research focuses on cultural aspects of the climate emergency in Germany, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and the United States. As an environmental humanist, Richter engages in activities that blur distinctions between traditional scholarship, communication, and environmental activism. He was instrumental in establishing the Penn 1.5 Minute Climate Lectures and Climate Week at Penn. With Fine Arts Prof. Joshua Mosley, Richter directs the Penn Animation as Research Lab, which produces the popular Project Poldergeist series of videos about climate adaptation in the Netherlands. He co-produced A New Peace of Munster, a documentary film about climate migration along the Dutch-German border. Professor Richter is a faculty fellow of Perry World House and of the Penn Institute of Urban Research, a faculty advisory board member of the Water Center at Penn and affiliated with Cinema and Media Studies and the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities.


Emily Falk

Emily Falk (she/her) is a Professor of Communication, Psychology, and Marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, Director of Penn’s Communication Neuroscience Lab and a Distinguished Fellow of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Falk is an expert in the science of attitude and behavior change. Her research uses tools from psychology, neuroscience, and communication to examine what makes messages persuasive, why and how ideas spread, and what helps people get on the same page when communicating. Her work has been widely covered in the popular press in the U.S. and abroad (e.g., New York TimesWashington Post, BBC, ForbesScientific American, and others), and she has consulted for and collaborated with major corporations, NGOs, and the government. Her research has been recognized by numerous awards, including early career awards from the International Communication Association, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Attitudes Division, a Fulbright grant, Social and Affective Neuroscience Society, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. She was named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science. She received her bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from Brown University, and her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. 


Kathleen Hall Jamieson

Kathleen Hall Jamieson is the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania, the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Director of the University’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, and Program Director of the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands. She has authored or co-authored 17 books, including Creating Conspiracy Beliefs: How Our Thoughts Are Shaped (2022) and Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President, which won the Association of American Publishers’ 2019 R.R. Hawkins Award. Six of the books that Jamieson has authored or co-authored have received a total of 12 political science or communication book awards (Cyberwar, Packaging the Presidency, Eloquence in an Electronic Age, Spiral of Cynicism, Presidents Creating the Presidency, and The Obama Victory). She co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication and The Oxford Handbook of the Science of Science Communication. In 2020, the National Academy of Sciences awarded Jamieson its Public Welfare Medal for her “non-partisan crusade to ensure the integrity of facts in public discourse and development of the science of scientific communication to promote public understanding of complex issues.”


Cornelia Colijn

Cornelia Colijn is Executive Director, Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. Cory Colijn envisions, plans, and manages all center programming, while building connections with students, faculty, and leaders in the energy industry. She joined the Kleinman Center team after serving as the administrative director of Penn’s Professional Programs in Earth and Environmental Science. Prior to coming to Penn, she worked for several Philadelphia-based nonprofits, focusing on the ecological restoration of Philadelphia’s extensive park system. Colijn holds a master’s degree in applied geoscience and a bachelor’s degree in earth and environmental science, both from the University of Pennsylvania.


Kathleen Morrison

Kathleen Morrison is  Chair of the Department of Anthropology and the Sally and Alvin V. Shoemaker Professor of Anthropology and co-chair of the Penn Environmental Initiative (EII). Her research is focused on governing regimes, agricultural change, and their environmental impacts in the Deccan Plateau of South India. Her books include Daroji Valley: Landscape History, Place, and the Making of a Dryland Reservoir System, The Vijayanagara Metropolitan Survey, and Fields of Victory: Vijayanagara and the Course of Intensification. Prof. Morrison earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992, her M.A. from the University of the New Mexico in 1987, and her B.A. From the University of Notre Dame 1984.


Joseph S. Francisco

Joseph S. Francisco is President’s Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, and co-chair of the Penn Environmental Initiative (EII).. He was the president of the American Chemical Society from 2009-2010. He is currently a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2010 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In his research, Prof. Francisco has applied new tools from theoretical chemistry to atmospheric chemical problems to enhance our understanding of chemistry in the atmosphere at the molecular level. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983, and a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977.


Michael Weisberg

Michael Weisberg is Bess W. Heyman President’s Distinguished Professor and Chair of Philosophy, as well as Senior Faculty Fellow and Director of Post-Graduate Programs at Perry World House. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Biology and Philosophy, advisor to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Nairobi Work Programme, climate advisor to the Republic of Maldives, and directs Penn’s campus-wide research in Galápagos. He is the author of Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World and Galápagos: Life in Motion, as well as a contributing author to the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report. Much of Professor Weisberg’s research is focused on how highly idealized models and simulations can be used to understand complex systems. He also leads efforts to better understanding the interface between humans and wildlife, between humans and the climate system, and how scientific issues are understood by communities in the Americas and in East Asia. Professor Weisberg received a B.S. in Chemistry and a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego in 1999, and continued graduate study in Philosophy and Evolutionary Biology at Stanford University, earning a 2003 Ph.D. in Philosophy.


Jennifer Pinto-Martin

Jennifer Pinto-Martin is the Viola MacInnes/Independence Professor in the Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine. She currently serves as Ombuds for the University. She recently completed 10 years as Executive Director of UPenn’s Center for Public Health Initiatives.

Jennifer received her undergraduate degree in Human Biology from Stanford University and her masters and doctoral degrees in public health/ epidemiology from UC Berkeley.

Her research has been primarily focused on the etiology of autism spectrum disorder and she directed the Pennsylvania Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, one of six such centers funded by the Centers for Disease Control, from 2006-2018. Her current research interest is the mental health sequelae of climate change and climate disaster, ranging from climate anxiety and depression to PTSD.


Sarah E. Light

Sarah E. Light is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses related to
Environmental Management, Law and Policy as well as Business, Social Responsibility and the Environment, among others. Light serves as co-Faculty Director of the Wharton Climate Center, as well as Advisor to both the undergraduate concentration and MBA major in Business, Energy, Environment, and Sustainability. Her research examines issues at the intersection of environmental law, corporate sustainability, and business innovation. Her articles have appeared in the Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and Organization and Environment, among others.

Professor Light has received numerous teaching awards for MBA and undergraduate teaching. Prior to joining the Wharton faculty, Professor Light served for ten years as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, including four years as Chief of the Environmental Protection Unit. Professor Light earned her J.D. from Yale Law School, an M. Phil in Politics from Oxford University where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and an A.B. from Harvard College.


Misha Rosenbach

Dr. Misha Rosenbach is an Associate Professor of Dermatology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Vice Chair of Education and Program Director of the dermatology residency.  Dr. Rosenbach’s clinical practice is focused on complex medical dermatology and his research is focused primarily on sarcoidosis and granulomatous skin conditions. He has published more than 240 peer reviewed articles, multiple chapters, and textbooks, including the premier text in the field, Andrews’ Diseases of the Skin

Dr. Rosenbach serves as the health system co-chair on the Committee on the Institutional Response to the Climate Crisis and is one of the physician leads of Penn’s climate and sustainability mission. Nationally, Dr. Rosenbach a co-Founders and co-Chair of the American Academy of Dermatology’s Expert Resource Group on Climate Change. He has published extensively on the intersection between Climate Change and medicine, in particular dermatology, and is actively involved in multiple organizations focused on sustainability in medicine.


Ezekiel Emanuel

Ezekiel Emanuel is the vice provost for global initiatives, the Diane v.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor, and co-director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at Penn. He has published over 300 articles, mainly on health care reform, research ethics, and end-of-life care, and has authored or edited 15 books. He was a special advisor on health policy to the director of the Office of Management and Budget and National Economic Council from 2009 to 2011.