Applicants with science or engineering backgrounds and analytical skills, and who have already completed a masters degree, will be most competitive. Applications for PhD study should be submitted to relevant Carnegie Mellon departments, including all of the Carnegie Mellon engineering departments. Applicants to other Carnegie Mellon departments who are interested in this fellowship program and qualified are also eligible for consideration.
The Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research at Carnegie Mellon is offering competitively-awarded three-year PhD fellowships for interdisciplinary study of topics related to U.S. environmental sustainability.
Example topics of interest include water resource availability with consideration of population growth and climate change; measurements and indices of resource availability (e.g., crops, natural gas, coal, minerals) coupled with "best use" of limited U.S. resources; maximum potential crop yield in the U.S. and implications for sustainable population; indices of soil quality and resilience, and relationships with land use; implications of health care policy and immigration policy on resource requirements; and others.
Applicants should apply to the Carnegie Mellon department of interest, indicate their interest in the Steinbrenner Institute U.S. Environmental Sustainability Fellowship program in their application, and notify Professor David Dzombak (dzombak@cmu.edu) of the Steinbrenner Institute when the application is submitted.
Applicants should include the CV and statement of purpose from their application in the notification to Professor Dzombak.
Associate Professor
I use theory, experiments, and observational studies to address questions aimed at understanding how human alteration of the environment impacts the biotic diversity of communities and, in turn, how this loss can affect fluxes of energy and matter that are required to sustain life on the planet. I focus on this topic because I believe that global loss of biodiversity ranks among the most important and dramatic environmental problems in modern history.
A postdoctoral research fellow at SNRE's International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) research initiative, Lauren Persha, along with co-investigator and SNRE Professor Arun Agrawal, have received a nearly $400,000 grant from the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) to investigate the outcomes of Tanzania's ongoing forest management systems.
Yi Hou identified data sources for Colorado River Basin water risk index including water withdrawal, run off, population change rate, drought (standard precipitation index), and reservoir capacity percentage. She produced maps illustrating current, short, medium and long term geographic water risk levels for power plants by county in the Colorado River Basin.
During this internship, Elizabeth shadowed and conducted field research with science specialists and participated in both district-wide and forest-wide meetings. In a nutshell, she experienced the on-the-ground work as well as the larger system approach to forest management.